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Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

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Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#201

Post by gchamonlive »

visarga wrote: post #193
gchamonlive wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I on the other hand think it's irrelevant if a technology is a blackbox or not. If it's supposed to fit the opensource/FOSS model of the original post having access to precursors is just as important as having access to the weights. It's fine for models to have open-weights and closed data. It's only barely fitting the opensource model IMHO though.

> having access to precursors is just as important as having access to the weights They probably can't give you the training set as it would amount to publication of infringing content. Where would you store it, and what would you do with it anyway?

If it's infringing content, it's not open and it's not FOSS. For a fully open stack for local LLMs you need open data too.

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#202

Post by topaz0 »

array_key_first wrote: post #135
mike_ivanov wrote: post #85

All GUI apps are different, each being unhappy in its own way. Moated fiefdoms they are, scattered within the boundaries of their operating system. CLI is a common ground, an integration plaza where the peers meet, streams flow and signals are exchanged. No commitment needs to be made to enter this information bazaar. The closest analog in the GUI world is Smalltalk, but again - you need to pledge your allegiance bef…

We have systems for highly interoperable and compostable GUI applications - think NextSTEP or, modern day, dbus, to a lesser extent. Really, GUIs can be formed of a public API with graphics slapped on top. They usually aren't, but they can be.

Just because it says compostable on the container doesn't mean it will actually break down in a reasonable amount of time on your home compost heap, or that they don't leach some environmentally harmful chemicals in the process.

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#203

Post by lupusreal »

phito wrote: post #196
lupusreal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might loop back around pretty quick. I've been using it to write custom GUI interfaces to streamline how I use the computer, I'm working piecemeal towards and entire desktop environment custom made to my own quirky preferences. In the past a big part of the reason I used the terminal so often for basic things was general frustration and discomfort using the mainstream GUI tools, but that's rapidly changing…

Then it'll loop back again to CLI (or even direct system calls...) once human input won't be necessary anymore.

Maybe so! The way I see it going in the next few years is CLI tools remain valuable because they're useful to these coding agents. At the same time, users increasingly use GUIs which have been custom made or modified for them personally. We might even eventually get to the point where user-facing software becomes ephemeral, created on on the fly to meet the user's immediate needs.

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#204

Post by ok123456 »

Gud wrote: post #182
heavyset_go wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a period in the early-mid 2000s where CLIs were considered passe and an emblem of the past. Some developers relied solely on graphical IDEs on GUI-oriented operating systems, and the transition to Linux everywhere broke that trend. Some people didn't take Linux seriously because it was CLI oriented.

I don’t remember that at all. Maybe in some circles.

Windows and Java developers used Visual Studio and Eclipse. Everyone else used command-line tools.

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#205

Post by phainopepla2 »

diggan wrote: post #117
phainopepla2 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Codex-cli doesn't require Linux or WSL. I've been using it on Windows all week. That said, the model seems to get confused by Powershell from time to time, but who doesn't?

You should really try it in WSL or proper Linux, the experience is vastly different. I've mostly been using Codex (non-interactively though) for a long time on Linux. I tried it out on Windows just the other day for the first time and quoting + PowerShell seems to really confuse it. It was borderline unusable for me as it spent most of the reasoning figuring out the right syntax of the tooling, on Linux there is bare…

You're right. Tried it out this morning, and it uses fewer tokens and gets the job done quicker, not wasting so much time on the Powershell nonsense. I was resisting setting up WSL because this is just a temporary workstation, but it was worth it

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#206

Post by assimpleaspossi »

Of note: Occasionally I ask a FreeBSD question. Claude (and I think others) insist on using Bash even though I've told it for quite a long time now that FreeBSD does not natively use or install Bash. For which is humbly apologizes but will continue to do so on the next question.

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#207

Post by thinkingtoilet »

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #206

Of note: Occasionally I ask a FreeBSD question. Claude (and I think others) insist on using Bash even though I've told it for quite a long time now that FreeBSD does not natively use or install Bash. For which is humbly apologizes but will continue to do so on the next question.

That's how describe AI code agents to non-coders. If you ask it what 2 + 2 is, it will say "5". And if you tell it that's wrong and ask it to do it again, it will say, "You're right! My last answer was incorrect. The correct answer is 2 + 2 is 5."

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#208

Post by kristopolous »

mac-attack wrote: post #189
kristopolous wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I updated this thing that searches manpages better recently for the LLM era: https://github.com/day50-dev/Mansnip wrapping this in an STDIO mcp is probably a smart move. I should just api-ify the code and include the server in the pip. How hard could this possibly be...

Definitely searched apt on Debian before I installed the pip pkg. On a somewhat related note, I also thought something broke when `uv tool install mansnip` didn't work.

Thanks I'll get on both of those. It's a minor project but I should make it work

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#209

Post by luhsprwhkv2 »

phito wrote: post #197
luhsprwhkv2 wrote: post #120

The Claude and Obsidian combo is great. You can offload all the hard parts of managing the workflow to the robots. I've taken to analyzing my daily notes—a stream-of-consciousness mind dump—for new Zettel notes, projects, ideas, and so on. Gemini does just fine, too, though.

I would love to do this, but obviously the privacy concerns make it not worth it for me. And no, local LLMs are not an option for now.

Yes, that's true. I'm keeping it to work-related mind-dumps only. I definitely self-edit before I do so. I find there's tons of value in doing it, but it's not totally raw thoughts.

Re: Unix philosophy and filesystem access makes Claude Code amazing

#210

Post by heavyset_go »

jd115 wrote: post #184
heavyset_go wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a period in the early-mid 2000s where CLIs were considered passe and an emblem of the past. Some developers relied solely on graphical IDEs on GUI-oriented operating systems, and the transition to Linux everywhere broke that trend. Some people didn't take Linux seriously because it was CLI oriented.

Funny, I've totally missed this.

I was in an area with a lot of Windows and Java shops where this mentality percolated.

You don't remember the period where Linux was considered a joke compared to NT or "real" unices? Maybe I was just around a lot of elitists.

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