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Why is the terminal input so weird?

warp.dev

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Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#121

Post by AtlasBarfed »

lordleft wrote: post #18

Guys, it doesn't matter if you can edit terminal input in vim. If there's a way to do it in an even more ergonomic / user-friendly way, that's not intrinsically a bad thing. This entire comment thread makes us sound like tech-grognards. Warp's pricing model is a whole other issue though.

Yes, regardless of the motivation/the author pimping his product, fundamentally he's right about the maddening nature of command input. It's terrible.

Tab completion is a half-designed solution, and not exactly portable across shells.

Terminals need to stop pretending they are dumb 8" CRTs from the 1970s. Virtually all interactive terminal input is through GUI applications at some point, and if it's not, it's not by choice.

And performing stdin input in scripts for programs that need it? Don't get me started, and don't say "expect" with a straight face. The fact that scripting languages have no provisions after 40-50 years is nuts.

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#122

Post by fknorangesite »

babypuncher wrote: post #91
cdelsolar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be libre

"Libre" is just "Free" in Spanish.

In English, and especially in software, "libre" is often used to differentiate two meanings of "free": you know, ye olde "free as in 'freedom'" vs "free [libre] as in 'free beer.'"

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#123

Post by coldtea »

bee_rider wrote: post #28
lordleft wrote: post #18

Guys, it doesn't matter if you can edit terminal input in vim. If there's a way to do it in an even more ergonomic / user-friendly way, that's not intrinsically a bad thing. This entire comment thread makes us sound like tech-grognards. Warp's pricing model is a whole other issue though.

It isn’t a bad thing that somebody is trying to find an alternative to the standard terminal. Good luck to them! But they decided to write a whole blog post making up problems about peoples’ current workflow. People are naturally going to point out that they don’t suffer from these problems. If warp didn’t want it to matter, they could have not brought it up I guess.

>But they decided to write a whole blog post making up problems about peoples’ current workflow.

Not really, those are problems with current workflows.

>People are naturally going to point out that they don’t suffer from these problems.

They do, they just work around them or are used to them.

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#124

Post by shakow »

derefr wrote: post #64
nuancebydefault wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big problem with graphical programming: it is very hard to diff graphs in a graphical way. How can you even give review comments on changes? How would an automatic merge work? Also, the benefit of graphic representation of an algorithm is that it gives an overview that is easier to understand. But the whole graph with the real details, is just harder to understand. But the details are necessary, they make…

You can do all that at the text level, if it makes the tooling easier; the tooling would just be operating on a canonically-chosen textual projective representation of graphical code (think: `go fmt`, but as a FUSE mount!), rather than against canonically textual code. Changes on the text layer would be propagated back down as changes to the persisted binary AST that the text represents. As such, any Unix tool used t…

Honestly, I'm under the impression that you have basically just reinvented Lisp ;)

Or any homoiconic language.

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#125

Post by throw10920 »

sli wrote: post #108
shric wrote: post #94

Dark pattern #1: Allowing the user to download the app and only then requiring the user to login/signup. This is because you know very well almost nobody will bother to try your terminal if you make it clear you require a login up front. But if they've gone to the trouble of downloading it, dragging it to Applications and running it, then maybe they'll go all the way. Dark pattern #2: On sign-up, you "agree to our te…

I've heard of warp but knew nothing about it. I thought you were responding to the post, so I was honestly stunned to realize this comment is about warp itself. That's when I noticed the "pricing" link at the top, and... they want companies to pay per month for a terminal emulator..? They must, because they don't put any actual pricing on that page. That, to me, means rent-seeking. For a terminal emulator.

"Rent-seeking" is blatantly false. Warp is a piece of software that the developers are going to update over time. A subscription model is appropriate for goods and services where the buyers receive value over time due to the continued effort/resources of the producers. You might not want to subscribe to a service or pay for a terminal emulator (I sure don't), but don't lie about it.

"Rent seeking [...] is an economic concept that occurs when an entity seeks to gain added wealth without any reciprocal contribution of productivity."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#126

Post by itslennysfault »

shric wrote: post #94

Dark pattern #1: Allowing the user to download the app and only then requiring the user to login/signup. This is because you know very well almost nobody will bother to try your terminal if you make it clear you require a login up front. But if they've gone to the trouble of downloading it, dragging it to Applications and running it, then maybe they'll go all the way. Dark pattern #2: On sign-up, you "agree to our te…

If you're on Apple iTerm solves most of the problems outlined in this blog post. Option+click moves cursor wherever you want, cmd+click on any url or path to open it. Plus tabs, panes, and a bunch of other neat stuff. Free, open source, no login required, but it'd be cool if you donated to them.

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#127

Post by throw10920 »

sli wrote: post #110
password1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with the pricing? It seems pretty fair to me, free for users and paid for teams basically.

Rent-seeking over a terminal emulator is pathological at best.

The software-as-a-service model is literally not rent-seeking, by the definition of "rent-seeking"[1]. Please stop lying about it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33632437

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#128

Post by sokoloff »

throw10920 wrote: post #125
sli wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of warp but knew nothing about it. I thought you were responding to the post, so I was honestly stunned to realize this comment is about warp itself. That's when I noticed the "pricing" link at the top, and... they want companies to pay per month for a terminal emulator..? They must, because they don't put any actual pricing on that page. That, to me, means rent-seeking. For a terminal emulator.

"Rent-seeking" is blatantly false. Warp is a piece of software that the developers are going to update over time. A subscription model is appropriate for goods and services where the buyers receive value over time due to the continued effort/resources of the producers. You might not want to subscribe to a service or pay for a terminal emulator (I sure don't), but don't lie about it. "Rent seeking [...] is an economic…

A subscription model seems appropriate when the value accrues to the buyer over time without regard to the level of effort expended by the seller.

As a buyer, I care about my cost and the value I receive. I don’t demand to see proof of costs incurred or effort expended on the part of the seller to understand whether I got value in excess of my cost.

When I pay my house insurance or mortgage, I don’t ask the insurer or bank to show me any proof of anything. They’re not rent-seeking in economic terms.

Re: Why is the terminal input so weird?

#130

Post by fratajcz »

drcongo wrote: post #8

I have one question about terminal input that I cannot work out how to work out. The setup: I'm on a Mac, I use iTerm for my terminal, Fish for my shell, and most often I'm inside a docker container also running Fish and using iPython. The question: When I Ctrl+W to delete a word in a Fish prompt, what counts as a word is different to what counts as a word in iPython. For instance, Ctrl+w at the end of this string `t…

That bothered me too, the default function for Ctrl-W in ipython is unix-word-rubout from python-prompt-toolkit [1], which uses spaces for word boundaries. You can rebind it to backward-kill-word so it uses "not a letter nor a digit" as a word boundary.

Here's a gist with my config (also binds shift-left/right arrow to move to previous space instead of visual select): https://gist.github.com/fratajczak/64e32421a43d3b8194d0409ce...

[1]: https://github.com/prompt-toolkit/python-prompt-toolkit/blob...

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