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Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#111

Post by rbanffy »

alkonaut wrote: post #107

Is it ”possible”? That just depends on what you are willing to give up. You clearly aren’t fond of video calls if you consider giving up a graphical desktop.

I’d give up the GUI if that could get me rid of constant meetings over Teams.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#112

Post by ablob »

greymalik wrote: post #106
reissbaker wrote: post #103

The Vim/Neovim ecosystem has gotten unbelievably better over the last 5-10 years. "Living in the terminal" for core development work is IMO better than pretty much anything else out there; my Neovim setup has a modern plugin manager; an IDE-like experience with fast autocompletion as I type, goto definition, and automated refactor support; and a side-drawer file browser navigable with Vim motions. It feels like an ID…

What setup/plugins do you recommend for using Neovim as an IDE replacement? I use vi for minor text editing but have never used it for development.

Depending on what you deem to be a suitable replacement i'd recommend:

  nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim // integrates well with code actions and searching (very extensible in general, similar to ctrl-p)
  hrsh7th/nvim-cmp
  hrsh7th/cmp-nvim-lsp // for language server completion
  neovim/nvim-lspconfig // a bunch of language server specific stuff
note, that you'll probably need a bit of time to configure it to your liking and that nvim doesn't install the language server by itself, so that is something that you need to take care of by yourself as well.

If you want to see what a preconfigured IDE-replacement might look like you can take a look at lunarvim(but beware, it misbehaves on windows quite a bit, you're better of with a linux system here)

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#113

Post by pmontra »

I stopped using emacs to manage my mail in 1996 when my colleagues started to send me Word and Excel attachments. Not only I was using a text only client, I was using it on a Unix OS.

I moved my mail to the predecessor of Exchange on a Windows 95 PC. I went on for years with MS Express(?) and Netscape / Thunderbird for my personal email and Exchange for work email. Then only Thunderbird since I went self employed.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#114

Post by yeswecatan »

reissbaker wrote: post #103

The Vim/Neovim ecosystem has gotten unbelievably better over the last 5-10 years. "Living in the terminal" for core development work is IMO better than pretty much anything else out there; my Neovim setup has a modern plugin manager; an IDE-like experience with fast autocompletion as I type, goto definition, and automated refactor support; and a side-drawer file browser navigable with Vim motions. It feels like an ID…

Do you have your dotfiles on github?

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#115

Post by rbanffy »

I still use the command line extensively. However, I use a browser for collaboration tools and email, and Emacs GUI for coding. On the work computer, sadly a Windows box, I have no such luck.

Having said that, current windowed terminals are a sad shadow of the days of the VT330. Almost none can do double-width and double-height, many can’t blink, and none can do smooth scrolling.

Honorable mention to Apple’s (NeXT’s?) Terminal app, that can, at least, do double width and height.

None has Tektronix or ReGIS support - which would be wonderful for graphic panel applications.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#116

Post by rosnd »

>- Mutt doesn't handle multiple email accounts natively for work/personal. The solutions are hacks at best. Email servers are starting to use more complete auth mechanisms that don't work well with mutt.

How come? I use hundreds of email accounts with mutt and have never had to do any special configuration.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#117

Post by lelandbatey »

greymalik wrote: post #106
reissbaker wrote: post #103

The Vim/Neovim ecosystem has gotten unbelievably better over the last 5-10 years. "Living in the terminal" for core development work is IMO better than pretty much anything else out there; my Neovim setup has a modern plugin manager; an IDE-like experience with fast autocompletion as I type, goto definition, and automated refactor support; and a side-drawer file browser navigable with Vim motions. It feels like an ID…

What setup/plugins do you recommend for using Neovim as an IDE replacement? I use vi for minor text editing but have never used it for development.

There's really only one "class" of plugin that's a "must have" to turn Vim (Vim or Neovim) into an IDE replacement and that's some kind of Language Server integration; there are several you could pick, they all allow your Vim to automatically start and talk to a local Language Server, giving you all the fancy autocomplete/go-to-definition/inline documentation/etc that you expect from an IDE. Otherwise, I dunno, maybe a nice color theme? Probably the only one I really depend on that's not part of "general" vim is the FZF plugin, which lets me rapidly and quickly fuzzy search for files by their name anywhere in the folder I'm in.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#118

Post by alwillis »

undoware wrote: post #91

dude, I've been reading posts like this since the nineties (on Slashdot.) Terminals have been 'going away' for longer than I've been alive, and they will continue to diminish long after I'm gone. The reason they don't ever get there is that the market as a whole is still increasing in size overall, even as the stock of TUI-natives dwindles. There are simply so many more people working on e.g. neovim, kakaoune, and hi…

There also seems to a renaissance of new terminal applications—slick, GPU-accelerated, built in multiplexing, native support for Open Type features, full color support, etc.

I’ve settled on WezTerm [1] for now but Alacrity and Kitty are also impressive.

[1]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/

Re: Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?

#119

Post by adriand »

lelandbatey wrote: post #117
greymalik wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What setup/plugins do you recommend for using Neovim as an IDE replacement? I use vi for minor text editing but have never used it for development.

There's really only one "class" of plugin that's a "must have" to turn Vim (Vim or Neovim) into an IDE replacement and that's some kind of Language Server integration; there are several you could pick, they all allow your Vim to automatically start and talk to a local Language Server, giving you all the fancy autocomplete/go-to-definition/inline documentation/etc that you expect from an IDE. Otherwise, I dunno, maybe…

I use Neovim all the time but although I do have some linters installed I find all the fancy stuff so much worse than in a more visually appealing editor. I love vim and I do have a lot of affection for the terminal but things get extremely visually noisy with language servers in a way they just don’t with a more graphical interface.

It sucks because I want to use vim for TypeScript dev but I just can’t stand it compared to VS Code. For non-typed languages I still use vim, and I love how I can fluently edit anything on servers I shell into, but I kind of wish there was a middle ground of some kind.

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