On the other hand, there are many elements in the user interface that are not text. In fact, I think it would be quite understandable if one even separated REPLs like bash or octave to be "text user interfaces" while applications that make use of character placement and border special characters "terminal user interfaces", because they use means beyond text stream to communicate with the user. One might even render straight up graphics to a terminal [emulator application].

Even X had a separate application called xterm 42 years ago: the complete X system was not to my knowledge called a terminal system, except perhaps when discussing the dedicated client devices, such as VT1300. Also the term "virtual terminal" as far as I know has always referred to a the kind of interface this application is making use of.

So I think we can just accept that the term is overloaded such that "terminal" refers to both of these situations, as there is no historical precedent to have it exclude the other situation, and the term "terminal-based application" is completely clear to a rational listener.

I would argue that a local only session with terminal.app is still a real terminal session because the app is just a terminal for the connection to the MacOS version of getty. In principle, this is not different from having a serial cable between the host and an old-style terminal or encapsulating that connection over a different network like with SSH and telnet etc.

> less human-readable version of JSON

Please provide an example, how YAML can be less readable than JSON. I struggle to think of any.

People use YAML because a bunch of other people use YAML. Whatever its warts, there's no use resisting it.

If not using any esoteric features, it's more human readable (imo), easier to write, can have comments and has some useful features like different kind of multi-line values. JSON is valid YAML, by the way.

> it just seems like a more overcomplicated

Because people LOVE overcomplicated shit. You see it happen everywhere.

Because as long as you stay away from anchors and inline JSON, YAML is a perfectly workable, structured, human-readable format that supports comments.

I used to write Python scripts with Requests or run from terminal. It has a nicer syntax, all LLMs know it, and we all used Python in the backend.

https://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/index.html