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The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

joshwcomeau.com

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Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#31

Post by LAC-Tech »

elipsey wrote: post #6

I'm kind of trying to go the other way. I am amazed at how productive great front-end/js-first developers are with even just a browser console --- but I am totally flumoxed by this environment, and have trouble sinking my fingernails into the first ledge on that learning curve. Is there a "terminal developer's guide to front end"?

Are most frontend developers even able to leverage the browser console?

If you have transpiled react - which needs its own debugger - I'm not sure what interesting things you could do from there.

I don't think it's part of the culture anymore, unless you're doing vanilla JS or jquery. Happy to hear counter example, but I've had to show even node.js backend devs that the node interpreter actually exists.

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#32

Post by qsort »

speedgoose wrote: post #27
wildrhythms wrote: post #20

Honest question: Why is web development such a shitshow on Windows that that every single 'tutorial' like this doesn't even attempt to make it work, and instead just immediately directs Windows users to WSL?

Windows is not great for NodeJs based dev stacks, which are very common for web development these days. Because JavaScript developers tend to write their development tools in JavaScript. NodeJs is not great on windows because the packages/modules model uses many tiny files and the Windows filesystem, NTFS, is extremely slow for this kind of load. Another problem is compiling C/C++ NodeJS dependencies on windows. It’s…

Part of it is Windows being Windows, but part of it is languages/runtimes treating Windows as a second-class platform, which is understandable but a predictable source of problems.

See e.g. Python, which runs just fine everywhere.

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#33

Post by chasil »

bern4444 wrote: post #3

There's very little in here that is _unique_ to front end developers. This is more of an introduction to the terminal article. You have a web background and so perhaps wanted to frame this with that context but I think this is better off with a title of something more akin to `Introduction to the Terminal`. The only thing in here related to web is the `npm` command. Everything else, git, terminal tabs, meaning of `$`…

The author glosses over the differences between bash and zsh (and fails to mention that Apple used to use bash, and switched to zsh).

The author should have stressed that these and many other shells implement the POSIX shell, which is fundamental to them all from a scripting perspective.

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V...

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#34

Post by cercatrova »

God, please don't use Hyper, it's literally a terminal built with Electron, possibly the slowest practical way to implement a terminal.

If you're on macOS or Linux, use the built in terminal. If you're on Windows, use Windows Terminal [0], the new one, not cmd prompt.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#35

Post by jack_pp »

qsort wrote: post #32
speedgoose wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is not great for NodeJs based dev stacks, which are very common for web development these days. Because JavaScript developers tend to write their development tools in JavaScript. NodeJs is not great on windows because the packages/modules model uses many tiny files and the Windows filesystem, NTFS, is extremely slow for this kind of load. Another problem is compiling C/C++ NodeJS dependencies on windows. It’s…

Part of it is Windows being Windows, but part of it is languages/runtimes treating Windows as a second-class platform, which is understandable but a predictable source of problems. See e.g. Python, which runs just fine everywhere.

python doesn't have the same packaging shitshow as JS does though

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#36

Post by pcthrowaway »

cercatrova wrote: post #34

God, please don't use Hyper, it's literally a terminal built with Electron, possibly the slowest practical way to implement a terminal. If you're on macOS or Linux, use the built in terminal. If you're on Windows, use Windows Terminal [0], the new one, not cmd prompt. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

God, please don't use the built-in terminal on macOS.

Use iTerm.

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#38

Post by qudat »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #31
elipsey wrote: post #6

I'm kind of trying to go the other way. I am amazed at how productive great front-end/js-first developers are with even just a browser console --- but I am totally flumoxed by this environment, and have trouble sinking my fingernails into the first ledge on that learning curve. Is there a "terminal developer's guide to front end"?

Are most frontend developers even able to leverage the browser console? If you have transpiled react - which needs its own debugger - I'm not sure what interesting things you could do from there. I don't think it's part of the culture anymore, unless you're doing vanilla JS or jquery. Happy to hear counter example, but I've had to show even node.js backend devs that the node interpreter actually exists.

Source maps allow you to use the debugger just fine.

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#39

Post by cercatrova »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #36
cercatrova wrote: post #34

God, please don't use Hyper, it's literally a terminal built with Electron, possibly the slowest practical way to implement a terminal. If you're on macOS or Linux, use the built in terminal. If you're on Windows, use Windows Terminal [0], the new one, not cmd prompt. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

God, please don't use the built-in terminal on macOS. Use iTerm.

That's true but it's another thing that beginners will have to install. It's better to let them use the basic tools first and then suggest iTerm afterwards, in my experience teaching others programming.

Re: The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

#40

Post by clubsoda »

cercatrova wrote: post #34

God, please don't use Hyper, it's literally a terminal built with Electron, possibly the slowest practical way to implement a terminal. If you're on macOS or Linux, use the built in terminal. If you're on Windows, use Windows Terminal [0], the new one, not cmd prompt. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

Adding to this comment. Additionally, the author states you can have multiple panels. For those new to the command line you can do something similar using tmux.

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~ckuehl/tmux/

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