How does that implicit state help with anything if you look at the system as whole? Sure, with terminal applications the costs are spread around in more components, but ultimately the total can not really be smaller. You still have the GUI stack in the end, with terminal apps there is just terminal emulator and tty layer in between.
The terminal layer can exist outside of the GUI. That GUI programs provide emulation for this, yea, adds the whole GUI layer back in so systemically you are worse off.
The application doesn't notice any of this though. So they're easier to develop and the program itself runs faster (is lighter). Which is the specific point the article was making.
VGA cards haven't provided actual 80x25 text mode since forever, so you're still converting to pixels at some layer. Which means you might as well take full advantage of having full control over those pixels, rather than constraining yourself to the patterns that happen to be in your font.
With full control over pixels, you can use any combination of "text" and "graphics" that you want. For example, you could make Vim or EDIT.COM but with a normal mouse cursor and a scrollbar with pixel granularity.
> VGA cards haven't provided actual 80x25 text mode since forever,
Are you sure about that? The memory range still exists and still operates the same as it ever has. The _card_ just does the translation for you.
> so you're still converting to pixels at some layer.
This has /never/ not been true.
> With full control over pixels
Yea, again, you are intentionally not understanding the point the article or myself made. The application in text mode does NOT need to do this work. The application IS lighter as a result.
> but with a normal mouse cursor and a scrollbar with pixel granularity.
And how do you receive mouse inputs? With more code. How do you manage pixels? With more code. Are you understanding that this is PRECISELY the point here?
