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Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

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Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#181

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

mwcampbell wrote: post #152
stakkur wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You summarized my exact feelings about it, especially #1, 4, and 5. I get the feeling that the team hasn't done their homework on potential users and existing solutions.

No, I think it's incumbent on us developers to be more willing to pay for things. We know now that free doesn't really work.

>> it's incumbent on us developers to be more willing to pay for things.

If it is worthwhile and not freely available, I will certainly pay. There are some great IDEs and tools that fit into this category.

>> We know now that free doesn't really work.

I suppose it depends on your needs, but I find using free tools such as zsh, vim, tmux, linux, and many others very valuable to me.

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#182

Post by wraptile »

Closi wrote: post #11

Absolutely stunning - I've often wondered myself about why the terminal doesn't behave like this already, it just makes sense . My only worry would be this is obviously so great it's only a matter of time before Apple/Microsoft see the light and build something similar into their OS - however hopefully this happens via acquisition rather than what happened to Flux, Watson and Duet.

Most terminals do behave like this, or am I missing something? Sure it has some nice extras like help messages and icons but those aren't that important, right? Even super niche shells like xonsh [1] has visual autocomplete [2]

1 - https://xon.sh

2 - https://i.imgur.com/p8TFdKv.png

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#183

Post by brianm »

This looks brilliant, but...

Sending CLI input data, even just the root command, back to Fig is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of companies. Too high a risk :-/

If you don't need that data, don't collect it. I am sure it will lead to interesting analysis, but it will also leak a lot from companies who are unwilling to let that stuff leak.

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#184

Post by Blahah »

nerdponx wrote: post #139
colonelpopcorn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can stop at #1. Why do I need this when oh-my-zsh exists?

They are totally different things. This is like asking why you need a computer at home when you already get the newspaper delivered every morning.

It's the other way around. Why buy this newspaper when I already have a computer?

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#185

Post by shaicoleman »

mwcampbell wrote: post #152
stakkur wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You summarized my exact feelings about it, especially #1, 4, and 5. I get the feeling that the team hasn't done their homework on potential users and existing solutions.

No, I think it's incumbent on us developers to be more willing to pay for things. We know now that free doesn't really work.

I'm willing to pay if it's on hacker friendly terms, e.g. something similar to the Sublime Text model:

* No sign in/email required

* Works offline

* No subscription

* Updates for 3 years included in price

* Perpetual license for older versions

* License per user, unlimited devices and operating systems, including home/work devices

* License is just a matter of copying a file

* No telemetry/phoning home without explicit opt-in

* No DRM/copy protection

* No root access required

* Works on Linux

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#186

Post by arvindamirtaa »

brendanfalk wrote: post #175
coltons wrote: post #158

Looks really cool, but I would always use zsh-auto-complete. Maybe your market is for people that prefer GUI's over terminal, but like terminal power, or the newer generation of coders who went to code school and are not the older school terminal in the weeds people (sorry for a generalization)

> Looks really cool, but I would always use zsh-auto-complete. Thanks for this feedback. Would love to dig in a little more here. What is it about Fig that turns you off? Is it the idea of having a GUI in the terminal?

I just downloaded it.

It's not so much the GUI in the terminal. I actually think it looks pretty slick. It's what I give in exchange - accessibility permissions are a big no no. And of course, verified email for a CLI utility is pretty much unheard of.

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#188

Post by jlg23 »

I've been a unix user for more than 2 decades now and have seen many of projects like these. And I've dismissed all for the simple reason that they don't fix the problem at its roots: getopt et al should be instrumented to provide valid completions for all unix commands. A layer on top is destined to be out of sync with the actual implementations soon. We only get one more level of indirection, one more abstraction layer that can go wrong. I simply don't get it.

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#189

Post by mschrage »

brianm wrote: post #183

This looks brilliant, but... Sending CLI input data, even just the root command, back to Fig is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of companies. Too high a risk :-/ If you don't need that data, don't collect it. I am sure it will lead to interesting analysis, but it will also leak a lot from companies who are unwilling to let that stuff leak.

Thanks for the advice! We have a telemetry opt-out which turns this off.

Currently, we would still send a daily ping so we can track retention, but after the feedback from HN, we'll turn this off as well.

Re: Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

#190

Post by cwdegidio »

GordonS wrote: post #159
ttul wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are clearly not the ideal customer profile.. my guess is that the Fig team are going after corporate developers who won’t be as concerned about privacy so much as they are concerned about convenience and productivity.

As someone with the misfortune to work in a large enterprise, this doesn't make sense - corporate are very sensitive to data leaving their network. As just one example, the place where I work very rarely let's us use anything cloud-hosted (Slack is just one example). And when the do, it's a years long process to get it. I haven't looked into how this works, but if it's sending keystrokes or command lines to the cloud…

Exactly. Having data leave our network (major corp environment) is a huge issue. Even when we are working with vendors, data comes in, but rarely, and only with many levels of authorization does it ever leave.

Any tool that is sending any information to the cloud is DOA for our org.

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