Software Engineering Radio - The Podcast for Professional Software Developers · SE-Radio Team

SE Radio 669: Will McGugan on Text-Based User Interfaces

·51 min·4 clips
Will McGugan reveals how Rich makes terminal data instantly readable with color, style, and smart formatting.
Will McGugan discusses text-based user interfaces (TUIs) and command-line interfaces (CLIs), focusing on his Python libraries Rich and Textual. He explains how these tools enhance terminal applications with better formatting, interactivity, and performance optimizations, and demonstrates real-world examples like database tools and web-serving capabilities.

As heard by us

A practical look at why polished terminal interfaces are harder, and more useful, than they first appear.

Will McGugan treats Rich and Textual as a real design problem, not a bit of terminal polish. The piece explains how progress bars, tables, and other renderables fit together in practical CLIs and TUIs, and the performance section lands best: rapid progress updates can become the…

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Why you'd press play

If you build Python CLIs, this shows how Rich and Textual handle terminal UI work in practice.

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