The divergence between users and programmers became more pronounced over time. When command line interfaces were dominant they naturally made programmers out of users, even if they didn't realize it. CLIs made “using the computer” and “programming the computer” effectively the same activity in a lot of cases. A command someone entered to run a program was itself a program. Entering the previous command again and modifying it, for instance to pipe the output of the first program into another program, was also a program. Once the desired result was achieved, that final command could be saved and used again later. Or shared with someone to be used as-is, or to be tweaked a little bit for their own use case.

Each interaction with a CLI results in a valid program that can be saved, studied, shared, and remixed. That's a powerful model for the same reasons the spreadsheet model is powerful: it's immediate, not modal, and successful interactions can be saved as an artifact and resumed later. Can we do the same things for GUIs? What is the GUI equivalent of pressing the up arrow key in a shell, where I can recall my previous interaction with the system and then modify it? Can I generate artifacts as byproducts from my interactions with a GUI system that I can save for later and share with others?