Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

Is anybody still using TUI applications for business?

My family company is a wholesale distribution firm (with lightweight manufacturing) and has been using the same TUI application (on prem unix box) since 1993. We use it for customer management, ordering, invoicing, kit management/build tickets, financials - everything. We've transitioned from green screen terminals to modern emulators, but the core system remains. I spent many summers running serial and ethernet cables.

I left the business years ago to become a full time software engineer, but I got my start as a script kiddie writing automations for this system with Microsoft Access, VBA, and SendKeys to automate data entry. Amazingly, they still have a Windows XP machine running many of those tasks I wrote back in 2004! It's brittle, but cumulatively has probably saved years of time. That XP machine could survive a nuclear winter lol.

I recently stepped back in to help my parents and spent a day converting many of those old scripts to a more modern system (with actual error-handling instead of strategic sleep()s and prayers) using Python and telnetlib3. I had a blast and still love this application. I can fly around in it. Training new people was always a pain, but for those that got it—they had super powers.

This got me thinking: Are other companies still using this type of interface to drive their core operations? I’m reflecting on whether the only reason my family's business still uses this system is because of the efficiency hacks I put in place 20+ years ago. Without them, would they have been forced to switch to a modern cloud/GUI system? I’m not sure if I’m blinded by nostalgia or if this application is truly as wonderful as I remember it.

I’d love to hear if and how these are still being utilized in the real world.

P.S. The system we use was originally sold by ADP and has had different names (D2K, Prophet21). I believe Epicor owns it now (Activant before).

P.P.S. Is anybody migrating their old TUI automation scripts to a more modern framework or creating new ones? I’m super curious to compare notes and see what other people are doing.