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> 1) Any terminal that you can summon/dismiss with a global hotkey. Examples are Guake for Linux and iTerm2 for OSX. I consider this a must-have for all develop

by pfranz 7y ago

> 1) Any terminal that you can summon/dismiss with a global hotkey. Examples are Guake for Linux and iTerm2 for OSX. I consider this a must-have for all developers. Years ago I saw someone using this (I think it was actually Yakuake) and ran it for a bit. I really didn't like that it was a single session. However, I later messed around with tiling window managers (which relates to your #2!) and having a shortcut to pop up a new terminal is really what I wanted this whole time. Just to touch on #3, any time I'm writing a gui that's expected to have more than a handful of items I push to add a search bar with fuzzy matching at the top. Otherwise, search would get added after it's used for like a decade and everyone is immediately enthusiastic and grateful. All of the non-fuzzy solutions are too pedantic to use.

jsmeaton 7y ago
I'm not a fan of global/slideout terminals either. I typically have multiple tabs and multiple panes within each tab tiled on the right hand side of my monitor. CMD+Tab is enough of a global hotkey for my needs, and it's usually only one or two tabs anyway.
jakear 7y ago
It absolutely blows my mind how many developer-centric search UIs don’t have fuzzy search. Developer tools css editors for one (CSS! The language with margin-* naming conventions everywhere!). Also GitHub issue labels. Browser history too.
- m463 7y ago
  I think the people who sell tools or buy tools usually constrain themselves to "least common denominator" type of experiences. (This might be true of free/shared/common tools that haven't been configured yet) But getting past all that, after a lot of craftsmanship and idea sharing, that's when tools start to ramp up in productivity. I use emacs, because if something doesn't work like you want to, you can coerce it to do so. That said I personally wish it was python-based, because I'm more fluent in python than lisp.
tomerbd 7y ago
when you summon the terminal do you first then need to `cd` into the directory you need?
- Shared404 7y ago
  What I assume the parent was talking about was the ability to literally just open a new terminal window with a keyboard shortcut (e.x. Mod-Enter in i3wm). If that's the case then yes. While using i3, you can also place a terminal in the scratchpad, which works more similarly to Yakuake.
- pfranz 7y ago
  Yep. Looking at `history` it's often something like "ping" "top" "docker ps" "curl" which don't care about directory. Since it defaults to $HOME, that's generally good enough. When I was working more seriously on things with project directories I had a couple aliases set up with a simple bookmark system. The "bookmarks" would be symlinks in a dot folder. I could type `g proj` or `g lib` to hop around.
cweagans 7y ago
I don't use iTerm2, but I have a global hide/show shortcut via Hammerspoon (https://github.com/cweagans/dotfiles/blob/90764db6146383a92e1c7315e36744e3cabcd916/.hammerspoon/init.lua#L23-L37 https://github.com/cweagans/dotfiles/blob/90764db6146383a92e...). I could extend this to pretty much any app, but the only one I regularly need it for is my terminal. I like this method a little more because it's not a single session, there's no animation, etc. It just pops into existence exactly how/where I left it, and then goes away again when I'm done with it.

by pfranz 7y ago

jsmeaton 7y ago

I'm not a fan of global/slideout terminals either. I typically have multiple tabs and multiple panes within each tab tiled on the right hand side of my monitor. CMD+Tab is enough of a global hotkey for my needs, and it's usually only one or two tabs anyway.

jakear 7y ago

It absolutely blows my mind how many developer-centric search UIs don’t have fuzzy search. Developer tools css editors for one (CSS! The language with margin-* naming conventions everywhere!). Also GitHub issue labels. Browser history too.

m463 7y ago
I think the people who sell tools or buy tools usually constrain themselves to "least common denominator" type of experiences. (This might be true of free/shared/common tools that haven't been configured yet) But getting past all that, after a lot of craftsmanship and idea sharing, that's when tools start to ramp up in productivity. I use emacs, because if something doesn't work like you want to, you can coerce it to do so. That said I personally wish it was python-based, because I'm more fluent in python than lisp.

tomerbd 7y ago

when you summon the terminal do you first then need to `cd` into the directory you need?

Shared404 7y ago
What I assume the parent was talking about was the ability to literally just open a new terminal window with a keyboard shortcut (e.x. Mod-Enter in i3wm). If that's the case then yes. While using i3, you can also place a terminal in the scratchpad, which works more similarly to Yakuake.
pfranz 7y ago
Yep. Looking at `history` it's often something like "ping" "top" "docker ps" "curl" which don't care about directory. Since it defaults to $HOME, that's generally good enough. When I was working more seriously on things with project directories I had a couple aliases set up with a simple bookmark system. The "bookmarks" would be symlinks in a dot folder. I could type `g proj` or `g lib` to hop around.

cweagans 7y ago

I don't use iTerm2, but I have a global hide/show shortcut via Hammerspoon (https://github.com/cweagans/dotfiles/blob/90764db6146383a92e1c7315e36744e3cabcd916/.hammerspoon/init.lua#L23-L37 https://github.com/cweagans/dotfiles/blob/90764db6146383a92e...). I could extend this to pretty much any app, but the only one I regularly need it for is my terminal. I like this method a little more because it's not a single session, there's no animation, etc. It just pops into existence exactly how/where I left it, and then goes away again when I'm done with it.