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Terminals Are Sexy

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Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#51

Post by dannypgh »

pmoriarty wrote: post #38
dannypgh wrote: post #19

Every time I encounter a tmux recommendation it has me pondering whether it's worth learning minicom. When I first read the author's rationale for tmux it rubbed me the wrong way, because the main feature they dismiss as cruft- the ability to use it as a terminal emulator for a serial port - is something I still find myself using from time to time. Is tmux really so much nicer than screen it's worth learning minicom?

You could also learn screen instead of minicom. screen supports communication over serial.

Perhaps I was unclear: screen is what I use now (and have used for quite a long time) and I haven't moved away from it because I actually use and value the support of serial consoles.

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#52

Post by tshanmu »

notafraudster wrote: post #2

This is a lot to take in. Not sure if you're the author, OP, but in case the author is reading: Where would you suggest someone starts? (Note: Don't answer here! Use your answer to shape the organization of information on the site!) For example, I use ZSH. Should I switch to fish? The list suggests I'd be sacrificing power and the ability to write scripts but gaining, uh, intelligence and user-friendliness? Is that t…

It does not matter...a computer is a tool to solve a problem.

Just pick something and stick with it a bit....

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#53

Post by okdana »

notafraudster wrote: post #2

This is a lot to take in. Not sure if you're the author, OP, but in case the author is reading: Where would you suggest someone starts? (Note: Don't answer here! Use your answer to shape the organization of information on the site!) For example, I use ZSH. Should I switch to fish? The list suggests I'd be sacrificing power and the ability to write scripts but gaining, uh, intelligence and user-friendliness? Is that t…

The problem with most of these lists and how-tos is that they're the CLI equivalent of 'I Fucking Love Science'. The people suggesting things like zsh frame-works rarely seem able to properly justify their use — they don't know what they actually do, nor what the alternative is, nor even whether you could accomplish the exact same thing in a less featureful shell like bash. It's just a cargo cult of people who don't really understand what they're doing writing Medium posts or whatever to evangelise unnecessary, badly written software to other people who don't really understand what they're doing.

(In zsh's case, i think that's partly the project's own fault; it has very underwhelming defaults and a very overwhelming set-up process for new users.)

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#54

Post by sharpercoder »

black-tea wrote: post #50
sharpercoder wrote: post #37

I hate non-discoverable UI's. The first thing I do with any software, is click through all possible menu's, windows, ribbons, whatever. After some time, I usually get quite a grasp on what the software is capable of. The two notable exceptions are textbased UI's (terminals, dsls, ...) and softwar requiring domain specific knowledge (e.g. geomodeling software, specific 3D modeling software, ...). I never understood th…

A command line interface lets you communicate to the computer using language. Learning a language is something you can practise and get better at until you find that you're able to communicate very complicated tasks that the original authors of the programs had never even imagined. Graphical user interfaces are a caveman interface. You go to the market, see what's on offer, point to it and grunt. That's fine as long…

But most commandline languages are inconsistent, have inconsistent abbreviations, have inconsistent command parameter naming/defaults, contain acronyms of incomprehensible words, have plain weird names, contain inconsistent or outright incorrect documentation...

A language to do stuff is actually a great thiing, especially if it can produce readable and reproducable objects (programs). However, I get really scared looking to most commandline scripts. It's an incomprehensible mess people only can start to grok after years of experience with the particualr commandline tool.

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#55

Post by flukus »

sharpercoder wrote: post #37

I hate non-discoverable UI's. The first thing I do with any software, is click through all possible menu's, windows, ribbons, whatever. After some time, I usually get quite a grasp on what the software is capable of. The two notable exceptions are textbased UI's (terminals, dsls, ...) and softwar requiring domain specific knowledge (e.g. geomodeling software, specific 3D modeling software, ...). I never understood th…

For CLI apps you wouldn't have to click through all the menus and discover stuff, there should be a man page you can skim to discover it. Even better is that it's searchable, you don't have to click through all possible menus looking for that one odd feature you don't remember in 6 months time.

For full TUI applications I'd agree, there are usually worse at discover-ability, they are used because the make up for it in other ways like speed and learn-ability.

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#56

Post by black-tea »

sharpercoder wrote: post #54
black-tea wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A command line interface lets you communicate to the computer using language. Learning a language is something you can practise and get better at until you find that you're able to communicate very complicated tasks that the original authors of the programs had never even imagined. Graphical user interfaces are a caveman interface. You go to the market, see what's on offer, point to it and grunt. That's fine as long…

But most commandline languages are inconsistent, have inconsistent abbreviations, have inconsistent command parameter naming/defaults, contain acronyms of incomprehensible words, have plain weird names, contain inconsistent or outright incorrect documentation... A language to do stuff is actually a great thiing, especially if it can produce readable and reproducable objects (programs). However, I get really scared lo…

So? English is horribly inconsistent but you seem to be doing just fine. We know bash etc. aren't ideal. That's why Python was invented. But the reason they stick around is because they are useful and people do use them day to day. Are you really going to forgo language completely just because it doesn't meet your superficial idea of perfection?

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#57

Post by viraptor »

sharpercoder wrote: post #54
black-tea wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A command line interface lets you communicate to the computer using language. Learning a language is something you can practise and get better at until you find that you're able to communicate very complicated tasks that the original authors of the programs had never even imagined. Graphical user interfaces are a caveman interface. You go to the market, see what's on offer, point to it and grunt. That's fine as long…

But most commandline languages are inconsistent, have inconsistent abbreviations, have inconsistent command parameter naming/defaults, contain acronyms of incomprehensible words, have plain weird names, contain inconsistent or outright incorrect documentation... A language to do stuff is actually a great thiing, especially if it can produce readable and reproducable objects (programs). However, I get really scared lo…

> But most commandline languages are inconsistent, have inconsistent abbreviations, have inconsistent command parameter naming/defaults, contain acronyms of incomprehensible words, have plain weird names, contain inconsistent or outright incorrect documentation...

And how is this different for GUIs? Location / icons / description / ... depends entirely on the application. Some will have hotkey handles, some won't. Same app on a different system will look differently. (Possibly with different layout) Creating a discoverable GUI takes as much will and attention as a good set of CLI options.

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#58

Post by saagarjha »

Athas wrote: post #35
edhelas wrote: post #7

http://linuxbrew.sh/ but… why? We have distributions that are providing perfectly packaged things like Debian/Arch/RedHat. I find already Homebrew hacky on macOS so why porting it on Linux distributions :D Is there anyone on HN using it, I'd be curious to know what are the advantages.

Linuxbrew, like Homebrew, is useful for non-invasive non-system/infrastructure packages. Compared to system package managers, it is (arguably) simpler to use and contribute to, and often has more up-to-date packages (especially compared to e.g. RHEL) because it tries to solve a much simpler problem. I think there is room for a package manager that focuses more on managing your user-specific CLI tools than your system…

The “benefits” you are listing for Homebrew are interesting, because you can also look at them as disadvantages:

> it is (arguably) simpler to use and contribute to, and often has more up-to-date packages (especially compared to e.g. RHEL) because it tries to solve a much simpler problem.

Unfortunately, this often means it breaks or doesn’t do certain things…doing something simple like getting an old version of a package is nigh unto impossible, both because there doesn’t seem to be a built-in way to do this, and also because old packages are constantly removed from the package index. The fact that package inclusion is easy is nice, but it also opens issues that we’re already seeing in the npm community with regards to malicious packages.

The ability to install software to a non-system location is useful, but that’s really not something that Homebrew itself really recommends doing on macOS because it breaks a lot of things. It’s really only designed for a single user machine with the regular user being an admin, which is likely true for the majority of its authors, but for those who don’t fit into this you need to resort to a bunch of hacks to make it work.

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#60

Post by sharpercoder »

viraptor wrote: post #57
sharpercoder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most commandline languages are inconsistent, have inconsistent abbreviations, have inconsistent command parameter naming/defaults, contain acronyms of incomprehensible words, have plain weird names, contain inconsistent or outright incorrect documentation... A language to do stuff is actually a great thiing, especially if it can produce readable and reproducable objects (programs). However, I get really scared lo…

> But most commandline languages are inconsistent, have inconsistent abbreviations, have inconsistent command parameter naming/defaults, contain acronyms of incomprehensible words, have plain weird names, contain inconsistent or outright incorrect documentation... And how is this different for GUIs? Location / icons / description / ... depends entirely on the application. Some will have hotkey handles, some won't. Sa…

With a language, it is far more important. In a gui I can just click around and see. With tuis, I need to enter a command and hope it is the right syntax.
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