Plan 9's Acme: The Un-Terminal and Text-Based GUIs

The article argues that the appeal of terminal-based interfaces lies not in the terminal itself, but in text-based, standardized interaction patterns. It introduces Plan 9's Acme editor as an example of a GUI that achieves this through seamless command-line integration and the 9P protocol, enabling powerful plugin-like extensibility. The author reflects on Acme's strengths in providing a uniform, text-driven development environment.