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back in the 2010s I wrote this article medium.com/@jdxcode/12-... which contains an interesting bit on cli perf

31 Dec 2024

<100ms: very fast (sadly, not feasible for scripting languages) 100ms–500ms: fast enough, aim here 500ms-2s: usable, but not going to impress anyone 2s+: languid, users will prefer to avoid your CLI at this point

$ jdx --help

@jdx.dev

I largely still agree. I would squibble that "languid" is closer to 1s. I also think there should be another tier for things like `mise env` which need to be <20ms. These are things that you should feel free to put into things like bashrc without noticing delay, even if you do it a couple times.

31/12/24, 3:49 am0 reposts0 likes

$ jdx --help

@jdx.dev

31 Dec 2024

Of course, I didn't write that then chiefly because I was writing CLIs in node and knew I could never achieve that. I hinted at it, but I think if you would've asked me privately I would've admitted node simply wasn't good enough for some CLIs.