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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?

#151

Post by 29athrowaway »

reissbaker wrote: post #144
29athrowaway wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IntelliJ does all that much better than what any vim plugin can. DataGrip wipes the floor with pgcli How do you find duplicate code with that setup?

I've used IntelliJ plenty, and it's pretty bad at most of those tasks. Using the git CLI is much better for version control than the Jetbrains GUI wrapper; using Docker itself rather than a wrapper is much better for containers; etc etc. I'm sort of amazed the question of "can you do version control in a terminal" is even being asked... That's where git originated! That's the git team's primary development focus even…

> Using the git CLI is much better for version control than the Jetbrains GUI wrapper

For some things. But for reviewing activity in git, and tracking changes across time, doing it in the terminal is unproductive and sucks. (e.g.: 10 levels deep of git blame)

> That's sort of the point of *nix systems: multiple processes running simultaneously. Using the shell is of course going to allow that, especially with something like tmux!

I meant getting a consolidated list of from them, and also having the ability to run corrective actions.

> Most of the editor questions were also answered by my original post (and the answer was yes).

Sure, but how much crap do you have to memorize? It's not a unified experience. It's a duct-taped Frankenstein where every subsystem works differently.

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

#152

Post by jll29 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #146
notyourwork wrote: post #129

Many of our latest hires (new college grads) struggle with terminals and CLI in general. It seems like recently students have stopped getting this exposure which leads to them joining and not knowing how to ssh into a damn linux VM. It's a pretty daunting world.

I've talked with professors about this, and it seems that if students want to learn how to use the terminal, they need to figure it out themselves or take whatever UNIX/Linux-related classes that are offered, and those classes are usually electives and not required. Apparently some professors are leaning more and more on desktop & cloud IDEs, and other development platforms that just let students code and not worry a…

It is the job of the professors to create students that master the machines, not be slaves to them. We must raise a generation that creates worthy successors of systems like UNIX, X11, Emacs - instead of not mere derivatives.

Having said that I concur it's true what you say, there isn't somewhere to go at many universities even if students are interested - the command line hasn't got much of a place in modern curricula - but recognizing that we must fight it (employers talking to deans helps a lot! Universities are more customer-oriented than ever in history).

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

#153

Post by lizardking »

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.

I use a lot of them, many specific to my work, but here are some of the ones that I think will most improve the quality of life for most developers.

- For a plug-in manager I user packer

- For file/text search I recommend telescope (https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim)

- Copilot (https://github.com/github/copilot.vim)

- Nerd tree for file browsing (https://github.com/preservim/nerdtree)

- commentary for commenting (https://github.com/tpope/vim-commentary)

- ALE for linting (https://github.com/dense-analysis/ale)

- Mason for installing LSP servers (https://github.com/williamboman/mason.nvim)

Once you have the proper tooling in place you can do pretty much everything in vim that you are doing in vs code or intelliJ. I've just started using it for most of my dev work recently and I have found ThePrimeagen's youtube videos on vim to be a great resource.

Series on using vim as you editor (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm323Lc7iSW_wuxqmKx_x...)

Introduction to setting up your vim configuration (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2QJYq4IX6M&t=512s)

I recommend giving it a try. The process of learning it all was fun, and as you may have heard you can eventually get pretty quick using Vim.

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

#154

Post by lizardking »

adriand wrote: post #119
lelandbatey wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

You can use the vim extension for vs code, which let's you have your cake and eat it to. All the convenience of vs code with all the speed from using vim commands.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevi...

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

#155

Post by smeej »

jcuenod wrote: post #93

The answer is yes, but you have to make friends with the employees and plan to marry a local. See this documentary: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362227/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

This is 100% what I expected the question to be about. Thank you for providing the answer I was hoping for!

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

#156

Post by markmaglana »

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.

I still haven’t made the transition to Neovim in favor of stability, but here’s part of my dotfiles repo that installs all the plugins that I use with Vim:

https://github.com/relaxdiego/dotfiles/blob/main/run_once_07...

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

#158

Post by thomasahle »

lizardking wrote: post #153
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.

I use a lot of them, many specific to my work, but here are some of the ones that I think will most improve the quality of life for most developers. - For a plug-in manager I user packer - For file/text search I recommend telescope ( https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim ) - Copilot ( https://github.com/github/copilot.vim ) - Nerd tree for file browsing ( https://github.com/preservim/nerdtree ) - commentar…

Is there an LSP that allows refactoring Python code like PyCharm?

I haven't found any other tools that does simple things like extracting a function, renaming or inlining variables. For example, vscode's Python support is terrible.

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

#159

Post by syntheweave »

This is a question about lifestyle, really. Most "ways of living" that deal with modern office environments can't do it. And a lot of bureaucratic functions need a graphical browser.

But if your day to day is physical labor, crafts, writing, theoretical research etc. - you don't need the computer much to begin with.

If you allow your phone to act as your sole graphical environment, I think it can work out.

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

#160

Post by Thorentis »

I wonder whether anybody has developed a CLI browser that also has a JavaScript engine. I've seen plenty of TUIs that have modals, text line inputs, etc. You could probably get pretty far so that at least you can support more of the Web. At least to start with just using an engine to allow JavaScript to have control over HTML elements would be a start that would solve many of the issues with text browsers.
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