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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

#271

Post by smoldesu »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #87
laurent123456 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telemetry being on by default on something like this is going to be hard to pull off. Homebrew has telemetry but it's only for Homebrew commands. This would potentially be for every single command one type in a terminal. It just takes one little bug in the app and who knows what can be sent, maybe passwords and so on.

> Homebrew has telemetry but it's only for Homebrew commands. It was also more than a little controversial.

Homebrew's telemetry burned so many bridges back in the day. I had a friend who sold his week-old 15-inch MBP over that.

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

#272

Post by dheera »

mschrage wrote: post #254
dheera wrote: post #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 wa…

To get autocomplete working, you just need to install the macOS app. ( https://fig.io/hn ) These instructions only apply if you want to develop your own completion specs and are setting up the dev environment!

Oh I see. I use Linux, so I guess this isn't an option.

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

#273

Post by ljm »

verdverm wrote: post #89
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…

Point 2 is how I feel these days. It's hard to trust any low-level (installable) dev tools supported by VCs. Personally, that hard to trust is also moving up the stack, maybe more so because of the increased attacks on the software supply chain vendors (i.e. CodeCov, SolarWinds)

I agree, and since it's VC backed it also feels like this is going to end up as SaaS for your terminal.

I would honestly feel less skeptical if this was a Show HN and the founders had just organically launched an app that did autocomplete and asked for some money to buy a license. I'd put that along side similar attempts like Xiki.

VC-backed changes it though, it feels different. It'll start with a subscription model and if this requires elevated privileges to run as what could essentially be a keylogger, it won't be long before the privacy promise goes away and the marketing team takes hold.

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

#274

Post by smoldesu »

ttul wrote: post #121
jjwiseman wrote: post #92

When it required me to enter my "work email" to "connect with teammates" before I could use it, I dragged it to the trash.

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.

What does this even mean? Pushing a Mac-exclusive app is hard enough, now you're further delineating between different "customer profiles"? It's an open-source app, it's "customer profile" is everyone with the means to install it, and their developers are the same people who use it on a daily basis.

Even still, your purported "corporate developers" would probably be more interested in privacy than your typical client, considering that corporations literally pay tens of thousands of dollars for proprietary tools like this, just so they have someone to hold liable if it breaks.

In either case, privacy is not a choice when you're working this low on the stack. You need to be operating with the lowest possible performance and telemetry options, or else you start to compromise the value proposition of your product. I wouldn't be surprised if this comment section acts as a good wake-up call to the core development team to switch their priorities, because developers don't agree with their current paradigm.

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

#275

Post by binbag »

kokanee wrote: post #135
brendanfalk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you and I agree. This is a huge oversight on our part and we will make the disableTelemetry command turn off all telemetry. This will come out in our next build

Nice! Good call. These HN posts can bring a lot of heat but it comes with extremely valuable feedback like this. For me it's too late; I've now seen that you need to be caught in the act before you'll do the right thing -- but for folks who didn't see this you'll be much better off going forward.

This seems really harsh. It's not like the guy tried to hide from you that it would still permit one daily ping. He told you straight up.

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

#276

Post by verdverm »

mschrage wrote: post #127
verdverm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many CLI libraries provide the ability to generate auto-completion scripts. Cobra for Golang is an excellent example. It provides functions for all the major shells and is quite simple to add to any Go CLI using the library. It also supports dynamic calls for when someone wants to autocomplete on a resource known only to the running CLI. For python argparse, there is argcomplete in the same vein

We're building out integrations with CLI libraries like cobra and oclif[0], so you can generate a Fig completion spec automatically the same way! Then it just comes down to the Fig popover UX. [0] https://github.com/withfig/oclif-plugin

Does Fig then need to mirror autocomplete for any command which wants to make use of the popover UX?

(one of the reasons I would not want this tool, colors and file extensions are sufficient for types, no need for icons, popups, and yet another tool)

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

#277

Post by albertzeyer »

There are many related attempts to make the terminal more modern, by including some HTML in it, improved auto-completion, and many other ideas.

For example:

- TermKit (https://github.com/unconed/TermKit, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2559734)

- GateOne (https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne)

- DomTerm (https://domterm.org/)

- Extraterm (https://extraterm.org/)

- GraphTerm (https://github.com/mitotic/graphterm)

- HTerm (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7539648)

- Terminology (https://www.enlightenment.org/about-terminology)

I wonder about the state of these, or in general about terminal emulators.

I really miss some extended features, like foldable text (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/terminal-wg/specifications/-/...) or even just standardized image support (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/terminal-wg/specifications/-/...).

And maybe this could be further extended to also directly support sth like this autocomplete support.

It becomes tricky when you think about how this works well together with tmux, SSH, Mosh, etc.

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

#278

Post by isitdopamine »

brendanfalk wrote: post #29
vhanda wrote: post #19

This seems really amazing. Please excuse my paranoia. Your privacy policy is very well written and easy to read. That's rare. However, Is there someway I can make Fig not send any data to anyone else? From what I understand, Fig does send telemetry information, but I'd like to be made aware of it before it asks me to give it "accessibility" powers. Also, while Fig may not send the data to anyone. Does this also cover…

Thanks! We do need to put in place a proper privacy policy. But we wanted to be transparent with how Fig uses your data (hence what we have currently). You can run `fig settings app.disableTelemetry true` to disable all telemetry except for one daily ping. You also make a good point: in our onboarding we should move our privacy information to before granting accessibility! We will make this more clear

Please make telemetry opt in, not opt out. And please honor the disableTelemetry setting by disabling the ping.

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

#279

Post by mschrage »

albertzeyer wrote: post #277

There are many related attempts to make the terminal more modern, by including some HTML in it, improved auto-completion, and many other ideas. For example: - TermKit ( https://github.com/unconed/TermKit , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2559734 ) - GateOne ( https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne ) - DomTerm ( https://domterm.org/ ) - Extraterm ( https://extraterm.org/ ) - GraphTerm ( https://github.com/mitotic/gra…

These are all such cool projects. We took some early inspiration from TermKit! I think the tricky thing is that you need to switch terminal emulators in order to use the new features.

We've tried to make everything as backwards compatible as possible. Our goal is for Fig to integrate seamlessly with your existing tools and workflows.

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

#280

Post by qzw »

calrueb wrote: post #93
vletal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what does it do? Is it just about the daily ping?

I assume they use it to track DAUs/MAUs. Otherwise, they only have data on installs, but wouldn't have visibility into user retention.

Yes, most likely. Being VC backed means they will want to be able to show pretty growth charts every few months.
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