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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

#261

Post by bloopernova »

michaelpb wrote: post #209
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

Yeah this project totally completely baffled me. "Autocomplete for the Terminal". What?? Bash has had fully programmable auto-completion for over 20 years [1] -- and that's just one comparitively bare-bones shell, out of dozens that are all free forever and not spyware. Watching their demo didn't help either. At most the behavior seems an incremental improvement over what Bash ships with in most distros, and it's not…

It feels like the devs are completely clueless about open source, command line, and modern shell features.

There's so many great projects for bash and zsh add-ons like fzf.

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

#262

Post by qzw »

mschrage wrote: post #230
zumu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Less trust in you as a YC startup. What if you fail? What if you sell out? > 3. Requirement of email. > 4. Telemetry and privacy concerns raised by others. Dovetailing on these... Like why is a CLI tool VC backed? Is the business model just selling our data? Is the VC backing for another product and the CLI tool is just a PR thing?

> Is the VC backing for another product and the CLI tool is just a PR thing? Autocomplete is our first product. The bigger vision that Fig can enable an ecosystem of terminal extensions. Here are some early prototypes we built [0] and here is the discussion from when we were posted on HN last summer [1]. > Is the business model just selling our data? We will never sell data. That just isn't the business we want to bu…

No offense, but the only way I'll believe a company will "never sell data" is if it never collects any in the first place. Even if I have ultimate trust in the current founders, what happens if/when you're acquired or the investors install different management?

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

#263

Post by hnlmorg »

ttt0 wrote: post #237
hnlmorg wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's about 6(ish) years old and went through various states of reinvention before I landed on the current design and it's been my primary shell for the last 4 years now.

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

#264

Post by qzw »

lasfter wrote: post #247
mschrage wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the VC backing for another product and the CLI tool is just a PR thing? Autocomplete is our first product. The bigger vision that Fig can enable an ecosystem of terminal extensions. Here are some early prototypes we built [0] and here is the discussion from when we were posted on HN last summer [1]. > Is the business model just selling our data? We will never sell data. That just isn't the business we want to bu…

> We will never sell data. That just isn't the business we want to build These are just words from strangers on the internet. You're offering a free and auto-updating app. You don't give me a contract guaranteeing anything. Most terms of use/privacy policies have a clause stating it can be updated without notice and when you do have actual policies on your site I'm sure they will be similar. At any point you can deci…

Good points. I'll add that the "disclosure by ransomware" risk is definitely not just theoretical anymore.

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

#265

Post by [deleted] »

meowkit wrote: post #176
dvt wrote: 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…

Eh money is trying to park itself somewhere. Maybe the founders sold this as a way to get dev telemetry data + a subscription.

[deleted]

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

#266

Post by smoldesu »

dvt wrote: post #168
zumu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Less trust in you as a YC startup. What if you fail? What if you sell out? > 3. Requirement of email. > 4. Telemetry and privacy concerns raised by others. Dovetailing on these... Like why is a CLI tool VC backed? Is the business model just selling our data? Is the VC backing for another product and the CLI tool is just a PR thing?

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…

It strikes me as a pretty disgusting waste of "millions of dollars" to develop a Mac-exclusive app that does the same thing that your shell does, but slower.

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

#267

Post by smoldesu »

mbreese wrote: post #226
mschrage wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, the text you type into the terminal NEVER leaves your device. Fig does not store or collect this information. We send an event when you insert something using Fig's autocomplete, so we can get a sense for how frequently people use the app. We also send which completion spec (eg. git, npm or cd) was used to generate the suggestions to know which commands to prioritize.

>We send an event when you insert something using Fig's autocomplete, so we can get a sense for how frequently people use the app And this is why you're never going to get people to use it. I get that you want to know what is being used, but really -- this is a terminal. You can't have any kind of telemetry for a terminal. If you had a very big notice when you install, asking for permission to send which commands get…

+1 for this. I don't wanna be rude, but dataops isn't a joke: I'm not going to put my security into the hands of someone who already made egregious security oversights an integral part of their product.

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

#268

Post by cerved »

nerdponx wrote: post #137
12ian34 wrote: post #80

Nice website, but I wouldn't switch to this from Fish/Zsh on account of: 1. Cannot identify any killer features above what I already have with forever free tools with much larger support communities. 2. Less trust in you as a YC startup. What if you fail? What if you sell out? 3. Requirement of email. 4. Telemetry and privacy concerns raised by others. 5. Not available for Linux, and I get the feeling that Linux woul…

#1 I do not agree with. This is a great idea for a tool, and I am willing to pay for it. This is an extension to my terminal and a useful adjunct to my shell, not a replacement for either. #5, maybe but that's fine. Lots of things are Mac-only or Linux-only. It's a proof of concept. Moreover they appear to be working on some kind of standard specification for completion meta-data, which other tools can start to adopt…

#5 is crucial, I highly value cross platform comparability. The existing differences are annoying enough as it is

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

#270

Post by ljm »

mschrage wrote: post #217
sidlls wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just to clarify, the text you type into the terminal NEVER leaves your device. Fig does not store or collect this information. We send an event when you insert something using Fig's autocomplete, so we can get a sense for how frequently people use the app. We also send which completion spec (eg. git, npm or cd) was used to generate the suggestions to know which commands to prioritize.

> generate the suggestions to know which commands to prioritize

What does 'prioritize' mean in this context? Other completion tools (like fasd) write command history to a local dotfile so they can build up knowledge of 'frecency'. This makes sense, it's no different to your ~/.bash_history file really. I wouldn't trust any single tool that tried to build a parallel history through an analytics integration.

Fig claims that it 'loads up once then remains entirely local', though, and it's adorned with an icon that suggests it remains offline.

What you're saying here seems to contradict that. If the tool is entirely local/offline, how is it phoning home with the commands you type? And does it send along the arguments you pass to the command if you happened to complete them?

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