Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#1

Post by Takizawamura » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

Does anyone have a simple, minimal 'terminal-based' setup for coding that they can share? I'd prefer to stick with application defaults if possible and minimize plugins.

For context, this is for a combination of C and Python coding on a Linux machine.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#2

Post by pwg » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

For myself, that would be an rxvt (or xterm) and the Joe editor in WordStar emulation mode.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#3

Post by asicsp » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

These might help:

* https://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/series/unix-as-ide/

* https://themouseless.dev/

Personally, I use gvim for all my text editing needs and use a normal terminal (i.e. no tmux, i3, etc). There's not much to share, unless you are interested in my vimrc, aliases, etc: https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#4

Post by jolmg » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

Typically, I'll split the workspace in 2 (i3 wm), have a terminal with vim on the right, and a stack of terminals on the left. One terminal would be with the shell mainly for interacting with git, running tests, manage the directory structure, building/packaging the project, etc. Another may have a project-specific console to interact with functions in the project as I write them. Another may have a development server running and show the live log output. I may tile this last one in a small corner above the vim window so it stays visible.

Terminal windows is what most of my windows are, but typically I'll also have a browser window for looking at documentation and interacting with the issue tracking system. If it's a personal project, I may have an emacs org-mode window for managing my tasks there.

I regularly fullscreen to different windows when I want more room or to focus on them.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#5

Post by _benj » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

with the release of nvim 0.5 I started using a terminal based setup, which is just a full screen terminal with tmux split in usually vertically, one big terminal on the left and 1|2 on the right.

On the past I've tried similar setups to no avail, but what changed this time was that I completely threw out the "religious" ideal of "evil-mouse" and turned on mouse support on both tmux and nvim and it's awesome!

Everything that I use often enough I made a keybinding for it but I'm perfectly happy selecting text or scrolling with the mouse on vim/tmux.

I've been using this for a while on personal Zig projects thought, for professional stuff that I just need to finish it, Jetbrains rules!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#6

Post by dyingkneepad » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

I use Vim and I make heavy use of the ":terminal" command. I use splits and buffers. Sometimes I have more than one tab in my terminal (terminator). I used to use Gvim too, that works fine too, but these days I have to make heavy usage of ssh so I kinda dropped the habit. Ctags is another important tool I make use of. I also do a lot of grepping but I should switch to one of the many better alternatives.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#7

Post by alpaca128 » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

I'm using Vim, either with multiple tabs and splits and a terminal buffer, or within a terminal multiplexer. The latter is slightly less consistent with controls but has the advantage that I don't accidentally start Vim recursively, which is usually not desirable.

Recently I started using NeoVide to run NeoVim in a graphical frontend that otherwise still looks almost identical. I'm not sure whether I'll keep using it long-term, but it seems even snappier than before. I guess terminal output just can't quite compete in terms of latency.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#8

Post by runT1ME » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

Depends on the language (I don't use it for Java), but for Scala and python I definitely prefer it. I'd definitely recommend using TMux with Vim, I've mapped my tmux navigation to mirror Vim's window navigation, and I can keep a terminal and REPL open and easily copy-paste between Vim and my tmux windows.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#9

Post by second--shift » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

emacs -nw is where i live.

just stick with emacs defaults, or if you already know vim use doom or evil mode.

emacs' modes give you syntax highlighting, formatting, code completion, a repl, and more. I do a lot of python work (not too much C), and still prefer emacs+python over vscode, idle, others.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone prefer a terminal based coding setup?

#10

Post by pjs_ » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

Yep, I do everything in Ubuntu desktop, bash, tmux and (n)vim and have done for ~10 years. I use only a small handful of plugins and configuration options. I try not to modify stuff too much.

To first order if I get a fresh machine or VM, I can get a development environment that I am fairly comfortable with with by running:

sudo apt install nvim tmux python3 python3-pip