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Will the terminal ever disappear? I would assume that the percentage of computer users who do significant work in a terminal (email, IRC, coding, etc.) is stil

by _t4xj 8y ago

Will the terminal ever disappear? I would assume that the percentage of computer users who do significant work in a terminal (email, IRC, coding, etc.) is still decreasing steadily today. What I'm not sure about, how does this decline in penetration compare to the (still real) growth in the worldwide computer user base? Seems that at least the Internet user base is still growing ~10% p.a. What does this mean for absolute terminal user numbers? I would guess they peaked already a decade ago, with people switching to / starting out with smartphones and tablets instead of notebooks/desktops. I can also see a world in which a highly disruptive technology (e.g., brain-computer interfaces) would make the terminal redundant once and forever, assuming that the new technology was more efficient/productive than a terminal.

pfranz 8y ago
Maybe I'm a bit biased by my love for the terminal for most of my work responsibilities--I just can't imagine doing my job without it. Maybe I'm old and things from 10-20 years ago seem recent. Apple deciding to stick a terminal in OSX 20 years ago (a lot of people didn't expect them to include one) helped with the boom of Silicon Valley engineers choosing Apple laptops. PowerShell, first released only 10 years ago by Microsoft with major versions being released every couple years, shows they feel there's a need for investing in Terminals. Windows Subsystem for Linux was first released 2 years ago. While it's technically just compatibility with Linux binaries, I've only seen it being used via a terminal. You're right, with more and more computer users added every day, as a percentage command line users have probably been shrinking for a long time. But I would also expect in raw numbers they're probably still growing.
__s 8y ago
Terminal is vital for reproducibility/automation. It's an interactive config file, where a config file must be portable
ptman 8y ago
we have new terminals all the time, like browser javascript console

by _t4xj 8y ago

pfranz 8y ago

Maybe I'm a bit biased by my love for the terminal for most of my work responsibilities--I just can't imagine doing my job without it. Maybe I'm old and things from 10-20 years ago seem recent. Apple deciding to stick a terminal in OSX 20 years ago (a lot of people didn't expect them to include one) helped with the boom of Silicon Valley engineers choosing Apple laptops. PowerShell, first released only 10 years ago by Microsoft with major versions being released every couple years, shows they feel there's a need for investing in Terminals. Windows Subsystem for Linux was first released 2 years ago. While it's technically just compatibility with Linux binaries, I've only seen it being used via a terminal. You're right, with more and more computer users added every day, as a percentage command line users have probably been shrinking for a long time. But I would also expect in raw numbers they're probably still growing.

__s 8y ago

Terminal is vital for reproducibility/automation. It's an interactive config file, where a config file must be portable

ptman 8y ago

we have new terminals all the time, like browser javascript console