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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

#231
I've been using xonsh, which also has autocomplete for a lot of things, and I LOVE the python shell because bash syntax is very alien to me.

The screenshots of fig look awesome, especially the git syntax and things, but my main feedback is I can't figure out what the hell fig is.

> git clone https://github.com/YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/autocomplete.git fig-autocomplete

> npm install

First reaction is WTF? I thought Fig was going to be some bash replacement that does autocomplete and was hoping to ask for a matching xonsh replacement.

But why do I need my git username and npm to have autocomplete in the shell?

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

#232
post #219
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just adding, from their website: > Investors: We've raised several million dollars from amazing VCs like General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins, and angels like Jason Warner, Adam Gross, Olivier Pomel, Scott Belsky, Will Gaybrick and a handful of other impressive dev tool founders and executives. The fact that a CLI tool raised millions of dollars while also being basically powered by open-source contributions is also…

> The fact that a CLI tool raised millions of dollars while also being basically powered by open-source contributions is also kind of a wtf moment to me, but what do I know. There's probably more money than people know what to do with. So they might be investing in completely crazy ideas hoping that the founders figure it out along the way.

> There's probably more money than people know what to do with.

Not really, in the bay area engineers make $150K-500K/year (closer to the $150K end for startups) and office space costs upwards of $200K-300K/year.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS switched from bash to zsh a few years ago...

Zsh autocomplete is much slower than Bash autocomplete.

May be the setup you used. Too many plugins may make the shell unresposive. Anedoctally I autocompleted `ls /etc/` on zsh with a few plugins and on a bash with minimal setup. They were pretty much instantaneous. Maybe zsh was faster.

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

#234
post #178
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just adding, from their website: > Investors: We've raised several million dollars from amazing VCs like General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins, and angels like Jason Warner, Adam Gross, Olivier Pomel, Scott Belsky, Will Gaybrick and a handful of other impressive dev tool founders and executives. The fact that a CLI tool raised millions of dollars while also being basically powered by open-source contributions is also…

I just wanted be a fly on the wall when Fig founders were pitching to these investors on how they are gonna make money. Can NOT this tool say to my employer - How many times I compile my code in a day ? When I get a compilation error - how quickly it gets to compiling state again ? Was the compilation error a trivial mistake ? How much time is spent between each commands ? How productive I am keying in command one af…

pretty dystopian

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

#235

This is cool, is the idea to eventually develop a full-blown terminal too? That seems where most of the value is to me, like you can't just make a 10x car by attaching stickers to an existing one, eventually you are going to need to redesign the whole thing, the same is probably true for terminals too.

Thanks so much! Yes - we would love to build our own terminal one day. I agree, a first party experience will make Fig much better. We think a good terminal needs to be fast, cross platform, customisable, and extendable (this is easier said than done). That said, one day we hope to build team-based tools too. Developers like to choose their tools - we would love to make Fig work, even if you weren't using a Fig termi…

This video was helpful to see. I do like the idea of being able to enter arguments in a form and get the full command, especially for complex scripts. An obvious extension would be pulling out argparse info e.g. from python scripts and letting the user enter arguments via a form

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

#237
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With millions of dollars you could probably just write a shell that does this sort of completion inside the terminal.

I did exactly that for free ;)

Cool! Was it a one man project, and if so then how long did it took to get it to a reasonably functional state?

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

#238
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started with macOS because I have a background in Swift development. Linux is definitely not an after thought to us! As for the telemetry concerns, I totally get that. We've tried to strike a balance and it seems like we've got it wrong. This will be fixed in the next update.

The correct balance is 0% of terminal activity is sent with telemetry, unless the user explicitly and specifically authorizes it.

Just add "0.0.0.0 fig.io" (or whatever it is, wireshark it to find out) to your /etc/hosts

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

#239
Setup is very smooth. I'm impressed how well this integrates with my macOS. Also a bit suspicious, but unless/until there's real evidence, honestly I think it's just because of VS funding + how well the setup / integration went.

Linux and especially smaller Unixes is where tools like this are really useful. My experience with Linux is that most stuff has to be installed on the command-line, or if there is a GUI it's clunky and/or missing features. And I would consider myself moderately experienced with the macOS Terminal, but I often got stuck / slow with Linux.

I really hope they add support for IntelliJ and other integrated Terminals. I'm pretty sure I end up using those a lot more than standalones.

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

#240
I love this concept! Especially that you are crowdsourcing completions, so some of the more niche ones can still get built.

Thank you for putting so many examples on your landing page. This seems obvious but so many landing pages don’t show me actual examples.

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