Adding bells and whistles to a CLI app.

Maybe you are just starting your software engineering journey and have ambitions of creating a really elegant app someday. Before you can craft the next Instagram or TikTok you have to get your start designing something. Writing a Command Linenterface application (CLI) is a great place to start testing your SE skills to see if you can build something simple, functional, and sexy. CLI’s are computer programs that you allow you to interact entirely through your terminal and they usually have a crude interface with constrained features. While most CLI applications may seem trivial you can actually have a lot fun building your own and sprucing it up with various bells and whistles that come in the form of ASCII art, specific Ruby syntax, or popular CLI gems.

Once

gem ‘colorize’

has been added to your Gemfile, run bundle in your terminal, and then start beautifying your CLI. Below is an example of how I went about adding color to some text and ASCII art in my CLI. Don’t judge this code too harshly it was my first CLI app rodeo.

Improve the user experience of your CLI by installing the Ruby gem TTY-prompt. The TTY-prompt gem reformats the output from your CLI to look like a menu list with different options you can allow the user to select. Below is an example of how I used TTY-prompt to make a functional menu for a hockey themed CLI.

Hopefully some of these tools will allow you to swag out your CLI and give you a basic understanding of what it takes to develop an application and how to make it a fun and enjoyable experience for the end user.

May the code be with you !

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