So, hear me out.
Nowadays, pretty much everyone uses the internet through graphical browsers. You open Chrome, Firefox, or whatever browser you prefer, search for something, open a website and interact with it through a graphical interface.
But I've been thinking... what if we had an entirely different internet? One that is built specifically for terminal user interfaces (TUIs)?
Not another text-based browser that takes normal websites and displays their content in a terminal. I'm talking about an actual ecosystem, with its own websites, services, search engine and browser.
Okay, but what does that actually mean?
Imagine opening your terminal, launching a dedicated TUI browser, and searching for WhatsApp.
Instead of opening the regular WhatsApp website, you find a dedicated WhatsApp version made specifically for the TUI Internet. You open it and start chatting, all inside your terminal.
The same could apply to Reddit, GitHub, YouTube, blogs, forums, documentation websites, and pretty much anything else you can think of.
Obviously, the developers of these services would have to make their own TUI versions. This isn't about magically converting existing websites into TUIs.
Developers shouldn't have to learn a new language
This is one of the things I really want to get right.
If you already know how to make TUIs, why should you have to learn another language or framework just to publish something on this ecosystem?
Python? Sure. JavaScript? Absolutely. C or C++ (btw, it is a crime to use c++, never use it)? Why not? Rust (amazing lang, btw), Go, and other languages? Of course.
The idea is to let developers use the tools and languages they're already comfortable with, instead of forcing everyone into one specific technology.
How would it work?
There are a few things this ecosystem would need:
A TUI browser: The application users would launch inside their terminals to browse the TUI Internet.
A TUI protocol: A standard that defines how TUI websites communicate with browsers. The current idea is to use HTTPS rather than reinventing the entire networking stack.
Hosting: Developers should be able to publish their websites using services like Cloudflare, GitHub, Netlify, or their own infrastructure.
A search engine: Because having an internet without a way to discover websites would be pretty useless.
Why even bother?
Honestly, that's a fair question.
We already have the traditional internet, and it works. So why introduce another ecosystem?
I think terminal interfaces deserve more attention than they currently get. They're not just something developers use to run commands or manage servers. They can be fully functional interfaces for actual software and services.
I'm not saying this should replace the traditional web. That's not the point. I just think having an alternative ecosystem built around TUIs would be interesting.
But there are problems...
A LOT of them, actually.
Security, standardization, compatibility, hosting costs, adoption, and a whole bunch of other engineering problems. There's also the question of why companies would bother developing and maintaining another version of their services.
And to be completely honest, I'm not experienced enough to build something this ambitious on my own right now. I'm still learning programming, and I have alot to learn.
But that doesn't mean the idea isn't worth exploring.
So... what do you think?
> What if your terminal wasn't just where you programmed, but also where you accessed an entirely different internet?
This is still just an idea. Nothing is finalized, and there are plenty of things to figure out.
I'd genuinely like to hear what other developers think. Criticism, suggestions, technical discussions, and contributions are all welcome.