As someone who doesn't use any of these terminal-modernizing tools: because terminals are archaic and mediate most of the important engineering work done in tech? It doesn't seem complicated. What's weirder is fixity the terminal interface has compared to the rapid evolution of all our other tools, from text editors to database interfaces.
Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
131–138 of 138 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a lot that can be improved in the terminal experience, I think. Discoverability is a huge issue with CLI apps, for instance.
Discover the app that does a specific thing or discover the options inside the app? For the former I don't see how to help except studying what's available. For the latter we've been having man and info since at least the 80s.
Both. GUI interfaces and apps have menus and undo that help with discoverability. To do something equivalent in CLI after not using a tool requires several invocations of man, --help, etc., and checking and rechecking that you hadn't got something wrong that can result in something catastrophic. Stuff like Warp seems like they with that, by interactively displaying most relevant info to help you write the right invocations.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
No one is cursing anything. I don’t even know who you’re referring to when you say “admins”. There’s one paid moderator that I’m aware of, no admins.
NB: There is in fact a moderator team, though dang is the one public face of that.
It's reachable by email: hn@ycombinator.com
And highly responsive in my experience.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
#134The inflow of new engineers which are not so familiar with traditional tools like a basic terminal and a text editor. That was all which was needed to write software. Most of the software stack was quite flat back then. Today, the way everyone starts is by installing a bunch of tools, frameworks and an IDE to navigate through those tools. Even a simple web page requires to install 100MBs of dependencies. Trying to le…
> An analogy would be, vim purists with 0 config vs people who have elaborate config I find this pretty offensive. I have a vim config that automated my workflows, and integrated linters and build tools etc...and I am using Linux based systems for over 22 years now. While I consent with the rest of your comment, I think that most people don't want to deal with shitty syntaxes that are less memorable than they should…
The vim purist having 0 config wasn't my original thought. I had heard about it before and I have seen talks where the speaker would do everything with default vim syntax and not use plugins or maps. I personally have a bunch of plugins and shortcuts because I can't touch type. so I need most used keybindings close by.
I agree the inconsistencies with coreutils. Having helper tools and scripts vs spoon feeding with all options using arrow keys. Just the extremes, having aliases is all good and I never remember awk and sed syntax.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find this pretty offensive. First of all stop what you are doing. This is about vim configs, it is not this serious.
Pardon my French, but everything about vim is serious.
vim wars. I am on the vim side. I don't care about vscode that much. The only gripe is the first class support vscode gets in terms of plugins as compared to (neo)vim.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
#136The inflow of new engineers which are not so familiar with traditional tools like a basic terminal and a text editor. That was all which was needed to write software. Most of the software stack was quite flat back then. Today, the way everyone starts is by installing a bunch of tools, frameworks and an IDE to navigate through those tools. Even a simple web page requires to install 100MBs of dependencies. Trying to le…
> I personally don't like to use pimped up terminals because they are written in electron and are not portable. Alacritty, Wezterm and Kitty say hi. Uber-fast native apps that also render all the modern Unicode symbols correctly (well OK, Kitty has some Python). You are also over-exaggerating and coming across as the "get off my lawn" guy. I am 42, I was there when terminals were as bland as non-salted spaghetti in b…
I use Alacritty full time (tried kitty, didn't work with my workflow), personal and work. I am not ruling those off. I don't mean to come as mean and conservative. I just don't like the over emphasis on "spoon feeding" tools across media. I know there are much better tools which can help with productivity. But, new engineers are only going to pick tools which are "marketed", the "hip" ones without weighing merits. But for sure, whatever works for them, who am I to judge.
I too use a whole lot of tools to keep the output less messy and I know some tools which have changed my life, ripgrep, exa, neovim, zsh, alacritty, git extensions, fzf and what not.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The inflow of new engineers which are not so familiar with traditional tools like a basic terminal and a text editor. I think many people start learning to use these tools at the same time they learn to program, I know I did. You expect junior devs to be terminal wizards? > Even a simple web page requires to install 100MBs of dependencies. No it doesn't? Some tooling requires lots of dependencies, but it's still ve…
They aren't literally claiming a physical requirement, they are describing todays most common workflow. If I said you need to install 100's of mb of gcc to produce a binary, would you say "no you don't? you can write bytes directly from the shell right into a file" It would be a technical fact, and yet kind of stupid to pretend not to understand that today, in all practical senses, one produces a binary with a compil…
Yo! exactly my point. I never expect new devs to be experts. But the labor I am spending to teach one of those newbies (well 1.5yrs of experience) about how to check for a port listening is just astonishing. Being a whiz and knowing the basics of the environment you are working with daily, there is a difference.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?
#138The inflow of new engineers which are not so familiar with traditional tools like a basic terminal and a text editor. That was all which was needed to write software. Most of the software stack was quite flat back then. Today, the way everyone starts is by installing a bunch of tools, frameworks and an IDE to navigate through those tools. Even a simple web page requires to install 100MBs of dependencies. Trying to le…
> The inflow of new engineers which are not so familiar with traditional tools like a basic terminal and a text editor. I think many people start learning to use these tools at the same time they learn to program, I know I did. You expect junior devs to be terminal wizards? > Even a simple web page requires to install 100MBs of dependencies. No it doesn't? Some tooling requires lots of dependencies, but it's still ve…
I understand it takes one text editor to write a static website. But hear me out, If you asked a dev today to make a landing page, they look for templates instead of writing that stuff. It's possible, but it's not probably today. Everyone is going to whip up a react or it's derivative to even write a simple project.