Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Xiki: An amazing shell

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 130 posts

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#61

Post by mattdeboard »

mkl wrote: post #52
KhalPanda wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, an average of 30 terminals at all times? Just out of curiosity... what for exactly? Real-time monitoring?

I always have at least that many too. Not for real-time monitoring, just a large number of projects and threads of thought, many of which last for weeks or months. I do this for everything: I just totalled up all my currently open terminals, browser tabs, documents, etc., and got to over 700, and it's only that low because I've restarted a couple of times recently....

If I had that many I'd never actually finish anything.

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#62

Post by mariusmg »

skrebbel wrote: post #30
copperx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, shell commands that produce and consume JSON?

No, objects. Non-text. Real data. Plus methods. Read a PowerShell primer to better understand this. PowerShell is geniusly designed and horribly implemented, so there's little point actually using it, but UNIX could really really use some of its ideas.

What makes you say PS is horribly implemented ?

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#63

Post by throwawayaway »

zorbo wrote: post #34

These alternative shells always get me really excited, until I try them out. Then the drawbacks become immediately and very painfully obvious: - Some are extremely slow, especially those that rely on complete webservers / node.js / whatever as a backend - Memory-hungry. I've got an average of about 30 terminals open at all times. 50 Mb per terminal really is a bit too much. 10 Mb is the upper limit on what a single t…

without having tried it myself, the guy started work on it 13 years ago. that would give enough time to polish off rough edges like you mention, even redesign out some design errors.

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#65

Post by jonahx »

lpsz wrote: post #32
pmontra wrote: post #31

Installed, started. xiki status says it's running but I'm back in my usual shell and nothing works any different. No mouse interaction like in the video. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, maybe the tutorial (Where is it?) or is it an OSX only thing? I'm on Linux. I started the web interface, used it to hook xiki to emacs, restarted emacs and run into the unfixed "error: el4r-instance is dead" bug. I stopped using…

With all due respect, this looks like an early-stage project. If everyone adopts such a dismissive attitude, Show HN might as well not exist.

I think the opposite is true: If the cultural norm here was to insist on good, simple installation and basic usage tutorials, then we'd see more of them and everyone would benefit.

This doesn't imply that you can't share rough, buggy prototypes. It just means that before you do, it would be expected that you spend more time guiding people to get up and running and pointing out possible pitfalls.

I'd argue that in many cases this doesn't even take that much time and yet is the single most important thing you can do when sharing.

Note: I'm just addressing your general point and not making a comment on xiki's install process in particular.

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#66

Post by spacemanmatt »

lloeki wrote: post #57
csandreasen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like a Python/Ruby/whatever REPL with shell functions? Something like 'ls' would return an array of objects describing files, like: def name(text): return lambda file: file.name.find(text) > -1 ls().filter(name('.txt')) but less clunky?

> Something like 'ls' would return an array of objects describing files You probably think of type-safe pipes similar to Go channels.

I was actually thinking I'd like a Go-like CLI. Realistically, I probably more want to convert a couple shitty shell scripts into proper Go programs and keep on using bash where it is appropriate.

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#67

Post by barrkel »

leorocky wrote: post #8

I quite like fish and have been using it painlessly for nearly 6 months now. I wish fish included an actual programming language that could replace bash scripts, but the sane advice from fish devs is to use a real programming language instead of bash or another shell script. Other than that I've become quite dependent on the nice autocomplete and suggestions from fish. It just works and I never have to deal with any…

You can go a long way with bash; it's worth learning because it lets you glue tools written in different "real" languages together very easily, as long as they all talk text. There aren't many other languages specifically designed for process control, orchestration and piping.

I don't like fish because it has almost no features, compared with bash.

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#68

Post by BPm »

I actually like my shell as it is. I like the old fashion with no mouse interaction except for scrolling. Is it just me? But I have to say the interactive search is appealing.

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#69

Post by lucb1e »

jestinjoy1 wrote: post #6

The most revolutionist change to a shell. The feature i found very much interesting is "in xiki commands can be run from the notes"

We used to call them shell scripts... I mean, it's not particularly new, only now you have to ctrl+enter each individual command.

Re: Xiki: An amazing shell

#70

Post by lucb1e »

sschueller wrote: post #18
trollol wrote: post #4

Great.. Wake me up when it hits 1.0.

It is already at v1.0 ( https://github.com/trogdoro/xiki/tree/master ). It has been under development for over 10 years.

This comment makes me wonder why he suddenly needs money for it now. Many huge projects started without kickstarter, even if they receive lots of contributions and donations nowadays, they never used to need it.

Hmm, and I remember some post on HN a few months ago about why open source projects should not ask for money/donations in the first place. The crux of it was that they basically become a company then: they work for money. People will expect something for that money, and A) features might be made simply because the developer feels he needs to do something in return for they money he's getting and B) people who donate a lot (i.e. have a lot of money) get a huge say in the project even if their ideas turn out to be horrible in practice.

Post reply on HN