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What's with the hacker community and their obsession with a terminal emulator? You're just writing to a framebuffer when you call printf. You may as well cut ou

What's with the hacker community and their obsession with a terminal emulator? You're just writing to a framebuffer when you call printf. You may as well cut out the middleman and get better, more responsive controls and rendering of a GUI (and let's not pretend this application is not a GUI). I prefer nedit, just wish it would support Unicode. Or maybe I don't and Unicode should just stop existing. I also notice nedit has less input latency than vim on most terminal emulators.

jbverschoor 4y ago
Terminal / monospaced font gives a lot of calmness to your screen. It also forced you to think about keyboard shortcuts and controls in general.
- 9dev 4y ago
  But why would I want to think about keyboard shortcuts and remember controls, if we can have better, self-discoverable interfaces rather than something designed in the 1970ies?
  - chrsig 4y ago
    I find they're very different parts of memory. Keyboard shortcuts live in your hands -- they're muscle memory. Trying to remember where some option in a cluttered dropdown menu you used 20 minutes ago is working memory, something I'm personally terrible with. It's either whiplash out of a flow state, or risks sidetracking me. It takes practice to build muscle memory, but it's something that generally stays with you for a long time, so it's an investment. The point is that you don't think about keyboard shortcuts. You just think about the thing you need to do, and let your hands do it.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    Doesnt have to be shortcuts. You know where the items are. Press menu -> 3x down, enter, enter, tab, tab, type something, done. Compare that to the same by mouse. This is why old cashier systems are so super fast.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- pjmlp 4y ago
  I have already done enough of it since Timex 2068 was considered modern.
c0mptonFP 4y ago
Because our main work environment is the shell..? Writing code in a terminal is seamless and fast, and it fits very well in a tmux workflow.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Mine is the IDE and whatever a shell can do, a language REPL does X times better.
hobo_mark 4y ago
You might not have the luxury of a GUI in many (most?) production (or staging, for that matter) environments.
- 9dev 4y ago
  Because what, you sit in the server room with a monitor plugged into the rack and work on production code? If something can open a shell remotely, it can show a GUI remotely.
  - quesera 4y ago
    > If something can open a shell remotely, it can show a GUI remotely. Secure servers do not include GUI packages. They are enormous, require elevated privileges, and have a poor security history.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      And secure containers also don't allow shell access, so.
      - quesera 4y ago
        There are gradients of "secure" in servers. No reasonably quasi-secure server in the last 25 years has included GUI packages, but has allowed and often depended on shell access. Modern deployment regimes which include ephemeral instances sometimes do not permit shell access. These are not the same things!
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Microsoft shops beg to differ.
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  Should you be spending a lot of time in the production environment though? Also, in many places, the list of things you can do in the production environment is quite short (viewing logs or reconfiguring things), because the app runs off a Docker-or-whatever container and is written in a compiled language (so you can’t just hack together a bugfix in vim on the production server).
benreesman 4y ago
Decoupling the machine where you do the edit/build/run cycle from the machine where you get your key presses and mouse movements processed has a number of advantages in the general case and is practically non-negotiable in a subset of cases. By having my editor (and the LSP servers, etc.) running on a different machine I can afford to have it be a big, high core count Linux machine maybe with GPUs in it that is arbitrarily hot or loud or heavy. For many languages (C/C++, Haskell, Rust, there are others) either the build or the go-to-definition or some other frequently-done thing are slow on even the best laptop / quiet PC. By having the client machine be an appliance running a terminal emulator, my colleagues and I can be indifferent to one another’s choices in desktop environment: there can be Mac people and Windows people and desktop Linux people etc. In my case I can have a slim little MacBook Air that can drive a big display, play sound properly out of the box, wake/sleep properly out of the box, and otherwise get out of the way while I work on the “real” computer, which can be anywhere with a manageable ping from here. There are disadvantages too: mostly that networks go down, GUIs are nice for some things, and others. It’s not a free lunch. It’s a tradeoff (and I’m aware that it’s surprising to many that regular computers still aren’t fast enough for many hackers), buts it’s not just Luddism.
- _0w8t 4y ago
  One can run GUI editor just as well either directly via ssh -Y or via VNC. So this is not an argument for a terminal editor.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    X and VNC and all the others place much higher demands on your network connection. If all your boxes are reasonably local those can be great options, but they still don’t obsolete tmux and stuff. Nothing obsoletes tmux and stuff. Whether it’s vi or emacs or tmux or whatever: this field is too competitive to let shitty stuff stick around for decades. People who go all terminal know the alternatives, they’ve tried them, they try the new ones, and they know what the fuck they’re doing.
    - _0w8t 4y ago
stjohnswarts 4y ago
there's xnedit, but I think you'll have to compile it yourself. I only had to do "apt install libmotif-dev" to get it to build with "make linux"
eikenberry 4y ago
Terminal emulators, IMO, have 2 big reasons they are popular. First is that they work like a better, more stable web browser in the sense that they provide a standard platform to develop UIs on. Second is that the command shell is arguably the best general purpose UI we have for computers today and it lives in the terminal.
pjmlp 4y ago
They are easier to implement than yet another X Windows clone, so that is why, they go with the easier path.
karteum 4y ago
> What's with the hacker community and their obsession with a terminal emulator? Because unlike web apps, terminal apps are often fast (and even faster when the terminal has HW acceleration, see for example https://alacritty.org https://alacritty.org). Unlike native GUIs, they can easily go through a low-bandwidth network connection (e.g. ssh). They are often portable and can be easily made stable without a huge stack of dependencies.
0x20cowboy 4y ago
> What's with the hacker community and their obsession with a terminal emulator? I spend a lot of time ssh’ed into other computers where there is no gui. I often tell new devs that there are different formats for computer programs, just like with media. 1. One dimensional, text only 2. Two dimensional desktop 3. Three dimensional VR / AR, etc Just like audio, video and physical immersive art, having one that exists doesn’t make the others invalid, bad, or useless. You need to pick the right format for the job. If you’re doing “low level” things one dimensional is often the most useful - which, I think, is why the hacker community prefers terminal based. (not to mention you can often view lower dimensional things in higher dimensions, but not the other way around (something like running a terminal in VR vs VR in a terminal))
dpeterc 4y ago
You can use xnedit which supports unicode (UTF-8). https://sourceforge.net/projects/xnedit/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/xnedit/ It can read nedit default setting file. It also supports antialiased fonts, has an improved file selection box, indent rainbow and more...

jbverschoor 4y ago

Terminal / monospaced font gives a lot of calmness to your screen. It also forced you to think about keyboard shortcuts and controls in general.

9dev 4y ago
But why would I want to think about keyboard shortcuts and remember controls, if we can have better, self-discoverable interfaces rather than something designed in the 1970ies?
- chrsig 4y ago
  I find they're very different parts of memory. Keyboard shortcuts live in your hands -- they're muscle memory. Trying to remember where some option in a cluttered dropdown menu you used 20 minutes ago is working memory, something I'm personally terrible with. It's either whiplash out of a flow state, or risks sidetracking me. It takes practice to build muscle memory, but it's something that generally stays with you for a long time, so it's an investment. The point is that you don't think about keyboard shortcuts. You just think about the thing you need to do, and let your hands do it.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  Doesnt have to be shortcuts. You know where the items are. Press menu -> 3x down, enter, enter, tab, tab, type something, done. Compare that to the same by mouse. This is why old cashier systems are so super fast.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pjmlp 4y ago
I have already done enough of it since Timex 2068 was considered modern.

c0mptonFP 4y ago

Because our main work environment is the shell..? Writing code in a terminal is seamless and fast, and it fits very well in a tmux workflow.

pjmlp 4y ago
Mine is the IDE and whatever a shell can do, a language REPL does X times better.

hobo_mark 4y ago

You might not have the luxury of a GUI in many (most?) production (or staging, for that matter) environments.

9dev 4y ago
Because what, you sit in the server room with a monitor plugged into the rack and work on production code? If something can open a shell remotely, it can show a GUI remotely.
- quesera 4y ago
  > If something can open a shell remotely, it can show a GUI remotely. Secure servers do not include GUI packages. They are enormous, require elevated privileges, and have a poor security history.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    And secure containers also don't allow shell access, so.
    - quesera 4y ago
      There are gradients of "secure" in servers. No reasonably quasi-secure server in the last 25 years has included GUI packages, but has allowed and often depended on shell access. Modern deployment regimes which include ephemeral instances sometimes do not permit shell access. These are not the same things!
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Microsoft shops beg to differ.
Kwpolska 4y ago
Should you be spending a lot of time in the production environment though? Also, in many places, the list of things you can do in the production environment is quite short (viewing logs or reconfiguring things), because the app runs off a Docker-or-whatever container and is written in a compiled language (so you can’t just hack together a bugfix in vim on the production server).

benreesman 4y ago

Decoupling the machine where you do the edit/build/run cycle from the machine where you get your key presses and mouse movements processed has a number of advantages in the general case and is practically non-negotiable in a subset of cases. By having my editor (and the LSP servers, etc.) running on a different machine I can afford to have it be a big, high core count Linux machine maybe with GPUs in it that is arbitrarily hot or loud or heavy. For many languages (C/C++, Haskell, Rust, there are others) either the build or the go-to-definition or some other frequently-done thing are slow on even the best laptop / quiet PC. By having the client machine be an appliance running a terminal emulator, my colleagues and I can be indifferent to one another’s choices in desktop environment: there can be Mac people and Windows people and desktop Linux people etc. In my case I can have a slim little MacBook Air that can drive a big display, play sound properly out of the box, wake/sleep properly out of the box, and otherwise get out of the way while I work on the “real” computer, which can be anywhere with a manageable ping from here. There are disadvantages too: mostly that networks go down, GUIs are nice for some things, and others. It’s not a free lunch. It’s a tradeoff (and I’m aware that it’s surprising to many that regular computers still aren’t fast enough for many hackers), buts it’s not just Luddism.

_0w8t 4y ago
One can run GUI editor just as well either directly via ssh -Y or via VNC. So this is not an argument for a terminal editor.
- benreesman 4y ago
  X and VNC and all the others place much higher demands on your network connection. If all your boxes are reasonably local those can be great options, but they still don’t obsolete tmux and stuff. Nothing obsoletes tmux and stuff. Whether it’s vi or emacs or tmux or whatever: this field is too competitive to let shitty stuff stick around for decades. People who go all terminal know the alternatives, they’ve tried them, they try the new ones, and they know what the fuck they’re doing.
  - _0w8t 4y ago

stjohnswarts 4y ago

there's xnedit, but I think you'll have to compile it yourself. I only had to do "apt install libmotif-dev" to get it to build with "make linux"

eikenberry 4y ago

Terminal emulators, IMO, have 2 big reasons they are popular. First is that they work like a better, more stable web browser in the sense that they provide a standard platform to develop UIs on. Second is that the command shell is arguably the best general purpose UI we have for computers today and it lives in the terminal.

pjmlp 4y ago

They are easier to implement than yet another X Windows clone, so that is why, they go with the easier path.

karteum 4y ago

> What's with the hacker community and their obsession with a terminal emulator? Because unlike web apps, terminal apps are often fast (and even faster when the terminal has HW acceleration, see for example https://alacritty.org https://alacritty.org). Unlike native GUIs, they can easily go through a low-bandwidth network connection (e.g. ssh). They are often portable and can be easily made stable without a huge stack of dependencies.

0x20cowboy 4y ago

> What's with the hacker community and their obsession with a terminal emulator? I spend a lot of time ssh’ed into other computers where there is no gui. I often tell new devs that there are different formats for computer programs, just like with media. 1. One dimensional, text only 2. Two dimensional desktop 3. Three dimensional VR / AR, etc Just like audio, video and physical immersive art, having one that exists doesn’t make the others invalid, bad, or useless. You need to pick the right format for the job. If you’re doing “low level” things one dimensional is often the most useful - which, I think, is why the hacker community prefers terminal based. (not to mention you can often view lower dimensional things in higher dimensions, but not the other way around (something like running a terminal in VR vs VR in a terminal))

dpeterc 4y ago

You can use xnedit which supports unicode (UTF-8). https://sourceforge.net/projects/xnedit/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/xnedit/ It can read nedit default setting file. It also supports antialiased fonts, has an improved file selection box, indent rainbow and more...