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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?

#261

Post by reissbaker »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #241
ar_lan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using different OS? This sounds like the programs your NeoVim is calling is failing you - not nvim itself. _cough cough_ NixOS can help you out here

It's not neovim, but the surrounding plugin architecture I need. I'm using coc.nvim to get autocompletions and documentation and I find that to be increasingly brittle. Also the python3 provider stuff randomly breaks in a venv sometime.

Huh, sorry to hear that. Personally the only annoyance I've had with coc.nvim was when they changed how autocomplete worked and I had to update my keybindings, but that wasn't particularly bad.

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

#262

Post by heavyset_go »

jll29 wrote: post #150
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.

It's upsetting to see how children's and young people's education gets dumbed down. I went to a toy shop earlier this week and the kits for scientific experiments (chemistry, electronics) have been dumbed down compared to the 1980s. Back then, you had a huge box with chemicals and tools and a proper 100+ page handbook full of experimental instructions (chemistry) or resistors, transistors capacitors etc, and a handbo…

> Starting next summer, I will include a 2-3 hour UNIX command line (and also a 2-3 hour LaTeX) intro into all courses I teach where that can be justified. (The UNIX Power Tools [1] book is a useful resource for teaching, I found in the past.)

That's great to hear. If I were in a position to introduce students to the terminal, I'd also try to expose them to the existence some modern CLI tools so they don't feel like they're trapped in the 1970's.

Something like Starship, tmux/byobu, enabling colors, exa/lsd for ls replacements, dust for a modern take on du, easy terminal editors like micro to ease students into editing text in the terminal, along with mentioning how Vim/Emacs can be used in places of editors/IDEs. They'll get to see that the terminal is both modern and relevant, with ample use of color, font weighting, emojis, images, text GUIs, window management via tmux, etc.

I obviously wouldn't make that the focus, but as a quick aside about the tools they can use with some screenshots or screensharing my own terminal setup might keep some students interested.

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

#263

Post by adriand »

gpanders wrote: post #148
adriand wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you explain what you mean by “visually noisy”? If you’re referring to the diagnostics messages (virtual text and signs and such), that is easily configurable to disable (I would know, I wrote it)

I mean like all the stuff that displays in and around the code, that isn’t the code itself. For example warnings, hints, etc. An obvious example of something you can’t do in Neovim is display information in a smaller font. Generally speaking you just don’t have nearly as many options for creating information hierarchies in a UI consisting of ASCII characters.

In terms of turning things off, if you turn them off, then what’s the point of having the language server? (Not a rhetorical question - I would describe myself as a workaday programmer, not a master by any means.)

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

#264

Post by gpanders »

adriand wrote: post #263
gpanders wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what you mean by “visually noisy”? If you’re referring to the diagnostics messages (virtual text and signs and such), that is easily configurable to disable (I would know, I wrote it)

I mean like all the stuff that displays in and around the code, that isn’t the code itself. For example warnings, hints, etc. An obvious example of something you can’t do in Neovim is display information in a smaller font. Generally speaking you just don’t have nearly as many options for creating information hierarchies in a UI consisting of ASCII characters. In terms of turning things off, if you turn them off, then…

>In terms of turning things off, if you turn them off, then what’s the point of having the language server?

Code navigation and completion, for one.

But there are plenty of knobs to turn that provide a spectrum between “show nothing” and “show everything”. I also find the inline diagnostic text noisy, so I configure it to only show on the line where my cursor is. You can also use the “open_float” function to open the diagnostics on your current line in a floating window. That way you can leave them off my and simply view them on-demand.

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

#265

Post by zzo38computer »

I do most of the work in the command shell, and in other programs in the terminal emulator (IRC, email, NNTP, and some games). One which isn't is the web browser, although I do not use it for everything. (Sometimes I do use Lynx, though) In some cases I had written programs if needed.

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

#266

Post by fishywang »

jolmg wrote: post #43

> - Mutt doesn't handle multiple email accounts natively for work/personal. The solutions are hacks at best. I don't know about Mutt, but I've had no problems handling multiple accounts with mu4e on Emacs. `emacs`/`emacsclient` can be forced to use the terminal by using the `-nw` option. isync/`mbsync` can also work with multiple accounts. Although, this program just sync's an IMAP account with a local Maildir that c…

I'm not sure about mutt but I used neomutt with Google oauth just fine (the setup is not particularly easy per se, but not too bad either).

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

#267

Post by jolmg »

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.

> It seems like recently students have stopped getting this exposure

Depends on what you mean by recent. I wouldn't expect exposure to have been greater 10-15 years ago. If anything, I would expect CLI exposure to be greater now compared to then, at least because of the rise of git.

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

#268

Post by rbanffy »

comfypotato wrote: post #243
rbanffy wrote: post #115

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?…

Sounds like you’d enjoy wsl at work. Wsl1 is necessary for file system IO

I use it, but I'm not saying I enjoy it - it's a bit limited - WSL1 feels more like Cygwin, and WSL2 more like a VM, but none is fully integrated into the environment.

I've been in the situation where I needed to config VSCode plugins to use one of the WSL environments and I'm never sure which `git` is being run (if it's the one that runs on Windows, the one in the WSL1, or the one under WSL2. The machine also disagrees with itself about what constitutes an end-of-line marker.

I'd honestly be much happier if the company either gave me a Mac (new office teething problems - third employee in the country - made my original order lost in transit, never to be found again) or allowed me to rip out Windows and install a saner OS on the hardware, which, apart from the UK keyboard, is not terrible.

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

#269

Post by ColonelPhantom »

Too wrote: post #251
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care so much what workflow some rando on the internet uses?

It's not only some rando on the internet. There's always that one co-worker with a wannabe-vim-hacker setup, that you have to help occasionally with some real work task and nothing in their setup ever works effectively (bonus points for only using DVORAK). After showing them how much easier things are with autocompletion in intellij, next week they proudly show their latest installed emacs-plugin, that only does half…

If you want half-assed keyword based completion, you don't need any plugins at all (e.g. ctrl-n in vim).

And if you install a proper plugin that uses language servers, you're at the same level of VSCode, which I'm pretty sure is the most used editor by a wide margin.

Your rant sounds more like you're more annoyed by "wannabe-vim-hackers" than any actual limitations of the tools.

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

#270

Post by ColonelPhantom »

netmonk wrote: post #231
ryandrake wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but to me, software that requires installing multiple plugins and extensions on top of it and requires much configuration in order to be useable is basically "unfinished software". It's 2022. Software not just has to work out of the box (or out of the download), it has to be packaged with everything needed to actually use it. It has to come fully configured for the most common use cases, or be able to fully c…

To be honest, VIM doesn't require plugin installation to be fully functionnal. The main problem with VIM is that nobody reads the documentation, and jumps directly trying to configure vim to imitate what they experienced with other softwares. Most VIM users never understand VIM philosophy and inner mechanism supporting it. They just try to bend VIM into another graphical code editor. It's like the meme about "exiting…

I guess you could shell out to check for errors (for example), but isn't it in general nicer to get error messages as you go? Or how about actually intelligent autocomplete? Stock vim simply cannot do those.

What are some examples of plugins people commonly use that you think are useless?

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