Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?

What is the problem with that ? I've tried both warp.dev and fig.io, except thier annoying telementry events, I love them both.

Developers use terminals frequently, and there have been no major improvements in terminal software in the last few years. I'd be happy to see more terminals developed because they are useful. I would rather encourage them than discourage it

made me think about my NEED of what I have regarding terminals.

I think I am using about 2% of the potential of what the terminal is offering me.

So my need for a new terminal app would be one which - undisruptive - trains me to unlock more and more power of the terminal.

first idea, a panel on the right hand side which explains what I just did, highlights pot improvements (how I could have chained the last 5 tasks) and explains similar or pot. next steps.

A beginners terminal.

What are your unmet needs in regards of the terminal app?

Sell user data that you smuggle out as 'telemetry' or justify as 'learning what our users want/need.'

The inflow of new engineers which are not so familiar with traditional tools like a basic terminal and a text editor. That was all which was needed to write software. Most of the software stack was quite flat back then. Today, the way everyone starts is by installing a bunch of tools, frameworks and an IDE to navigate through those tools. Even a simple web page requires to install 100MBs of dependencies. Trying to learn those tools from scratch is not useful because it's all abstracted and is almost never dealt with. These terminals are making the use of those tools simpler using features like autocompletes, suggestions, metadata about the command etc. It's just like how an IDE became necessary for some languages like .NET or Java because it was no longer just the language. For terminals it's now good 'ol coreutils vs a bunch of npm crap.

I personally don't like to use pimped up terminals because they are written in electron and are not portable. The whole point of using a minimal terminal is being snappy and portable. Just like engineers today can't write code without autocomplete, new engineers won't be able to navigate the cli without assistance.

An analogy would be, vim purists with 0 config vs people who have elaborate configs.

I like the idea of beginners terminal. To make them used to using keyboard instead of hunting for icons and menus. Once they are comfortable, they will find faster alternatives and end right back to the default plain terminal.