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

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

#91

Post by pdimitar »

t-3 wrote: post #88
pdimitar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you restart it though? Mine lives for days or even weeks sometimes, and is only restarted when it gets updated. When saying "fast" I definitely meant it as "all the operations it does while alive" and not "how many times per minute I can restart it" (lol).

When I need a terminal, mod+enter spawn one and close it. I'll often do this to download a file, start yt-dlp, mpv etc. The session is all tmux so I never keep the window around when not in use.

Sure, if that's your workflow then I get it. I and many others keep around several persistent windows or tabs however. I don't care if Alacritty takes 1s to start.

Still doesn't invalidate its usefulness, too. Alacritty in particular is often times a better Unicode-rendering citizen compared to other terminals.

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

#92

Post by jen20 »

junon wrote: post #89
jen20 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of customisation should be seen as a good thing. As a user I want apps built to fit into my platform, not for the app to be consistent across disparate platforms. I understand why marketing does not like this, though.

Qt doesn't magically help you with this either.

Indeed, it’s not “native” many places, but at least does not tend to become a blank canvas for marketing to build something completely custom on. I’d take QT over electron any day, but would pay for a native app over using either.

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

#93

Post by eatonphil »

gigatexal wrote: post #2

It makes no sense to me as well. Iterm2 + zsh + oh-my-zsh + tmux and you have everything you need. On linux I just use gnome-terminal + zsh + oh-my-zsh and I am perfectly capable. For me, this is a case of "it's not broke so why are you messing with it?"

I have the same setup but I can appreciate that not every dev out there has or wants the same setup as me. :)

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

#94

Post by krageon »

serjester wrote: post #33

Can we acknowledge that just because we don’t have a particular problem, doesn’t mean other people won’t? Will these companies be profitable? I have no idea. No one does. But I don’t understand this sentiment unless you’re being forced to use their product. When you start investing you quickly realize how difficult it is to gauge a “good” idea. The only thing that matters is how the market responds and it seems like…

> I don’t understand this sentiment

If they're re-inventing the terminal poorly it can only ever make things worse. What is not to understand about the sentiment that the world should not get worse?

> The only thing that matters is how the market responds

The only thing that matters is whether or not something can in aggregate make the world a better place. Tons of stuff does and is profitable, but most things that are profitable emphatically do not. So this is a terrible signal.

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

#96

Post by namibj »

anonymoushn wrote: post #74
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QT talent pool and ecosystem is a rounding error compared to what we have with the web ecosystem. If you want to make something with medias, graphs, a few custom widgets, a reactive layout and deep routing, it will take 10 to 30 times longer with QT. I myself prefer the snapiness of QT apps, but budget and time to market will win.

What does "deep routing" mean?

I assume either deep nesting or deeplinks.

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

#97

Post by eatonphil »

sofixa wrote: post #29

Strong 'old man yells at cloud' vibes here. First, there's only 2 apps. Second, none of the terminals you're talking about is in Electron, and neither is cross-platform ( partially as a result). Fig isn't really a terminal for that matter. So you're just ranting for ranting's sake without even understanding the subject? As for what the market is, maybe they're trying to emulate Docker's switch to developer tooling an…

I figured OP was talking about Fig and Warp.dev so thanks for pointing out that they are not Electron!

I'm now curious if these were actually what OP was thinking of.

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

#98

Post by krageon »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #70
Kelteseth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For electron, because it is the only reasonable multi platform UI platform out there. I do not like that fact but it is true. Why do people constantly repeat this? Did we all forget about Qt? Did Qt do such a good job of driving people away from it?

QT talent pool and ecosystem is a rounding error compared to what we have with the web ecosystem. If you want to make something with medias, graphs, a few custom widgets, a reactive layout and deep routing, it will take 10 to 30 times longer with QT. I myself prefer the snapiness of QT apps, but budget and time to market will win.

Electron apps are always resource hogs, frequently slow and generally integrate extremely poorly. As a consumer I care not one whit for how large the "talent pool" for the web ecosystem is, I care about how terrible the application is.

As a developer I must say calling it talent is in most cases a huge stretch, as I do believe you can probably make something in Electron that performs passably, integrates passably and will still be a resource hog. The reason we see basically none of this is because people simply don't care to engineer these applications well. "It's just the browser", after all. Why look deeper?

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

#99

Post by gigatexal »

eatonphil wrote: post #93
gigatexal wrote: post #2

It makes no sense to me as well. Iterm2 + zsh + oh-my-zsh + tmux and you have everything you need. On linux I just use gnome-terminal + zsh + oh-my-zsh and I am perfectly capable. For me, this is a case of "it's not broke so why are you messing with it?"

I have the same setup but I can appreciate that not every dev out there has or wants the same setup as me. :)

That's fair... but do we need venture backed terminals like warp.dev?

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

#100

Post by Brian_K_White »

altcognito wrote: post #83
jen20 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not negative to state the facts - all of those things are true.

Also no good will is also an opinion.

I missed the memo announcing those are illegal.
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