4 ms·

Mitchell, What has it been like witnessing terminal emulators make such a huge comeback with the advent of Claude Code et. all? I remember comments here in the

by WD-42 8mo ago

Mitchell, What has it been like witnessing terminal emulators make such a huge comeback with the advent of Claude Code et. all? I remember comments here in the early days of Ghostty along the lines of "Why is he working on a terminal emulator? We need people working on future problems, not the past!" Pretty funny considering I regularly hear people say they are in the terminal more than the browser now. Crazy times!

txdv 8mo ago
Once he fixes the past he will have more time to fix the future
pkulak 8mo ago
Wait, really? So I’ve used the terminal for everything for decades, and now, because of vibe coding, all The Kids have joined me? I don’t even know how to feel about that. Better terminals are nice though.
- thewebguyd 8mo ago
  Right? It’s been kind of funny watching everyone “rediscover” the terminal and I’m over here feeling like a true graybeard “silly kids, I’ve been here the whole time.” What’s old is new again is apparently just as true in tech as it is in fashion.
  - rvz 8mo ago
    It's because the web developers who destroyed the web are now taking their mess with them into more obscure places, such as terminals, hardware and AI. That's probably why it is so hyped up as it is right now.
    - xeonmc 8mo ago
      Embrace, Embellish, Enshittify.
    - ulf-77723 8mo ago
      Why the hate against web developers?
      - eMPee584 8mo ago
        Because of all the laggy javascript, wasting precious compute and gigawatts of power just to make buttons dance, track us and shove ads up ours? Websites used to be below 100KiB - now they come with MEGABYTES of obfuscated JS.. wtf Though obviously, it's not the individual developer to blame but the incentive system.
      - TheFlyingFish 8mo ago
        The HN zeitgeist has something of a love/hate relationship with the web, I've noticed. HN in general seems to skew a little older than a lot of online communities, so a lot of HN users were adults back in the early days of the web/Usenet/etc. There's a tendency to view those days with nostalgia, leading a lot of people to feel like the "good old days" of the web were "ruined" by the modern shift into more interactivity, fancier/prettier design, etc. And "web developers" are the ones proximately responsible for the shift, so they get the hate too. I laugh every time I see someone on HN asserting that the web "shouldn't" be used for anything beyond "documents and lightly interactive content", which is not uncomment. There's some real old-man-yelling-at-clouds energy there.
        ethbr1 8mo ago
        It basically boils down to: (a) 90s web developers tended not to have computer science backgrounds and weren't aware of fundamentals -> (b) when js frameworks exploded in popularity and diversity in the 00s, there was much wheel reinventing, because those developers (and to a lesser degree framework inventors) were often ignorant of wheels -> (c) there are persistent, fundamental mistakes* in the web ecosystem that could have been fixed at the start if anyone with experience had been asked. All of those people are now the vibe coders of the 20s, and it's going to end up in the same dumpster fire of 'Who knew it might be a good idea to cryptographically sign and control library packages in a public repository?' * Note: I'm distinguishing things going sideways despite best intentions and careful planning from YOLO + 'Oops, how could that possibly have happened?' shit
  - james_marks 8mo ago
    The terminal was _always awesome_, the bar to realized that was just a tad high for many people. Until now!
    - pizza 8mo ago
      here-doc usage has probably 100x-ed in the last year
      - monster_truck 8mo ago
        It's 1,000,000,000,000x easy. Have found enough annoying bugs in powershells implementation of it that I know nobody is using it.
        eyeris 8mo ago
        How so?
- lovecg 8mo ago
  Yeah it’s been amusing to see people rediscovering tmux as well
- chrysoprace 8mo ago
  I think terminal workflows are intimidating for a lot of people, because the discoverability is lower than GUIs. You can't necessarily intuit how a CLI works, you have to read the documentation or watch a tutorial, which my 10 years in the IT industry has taught me a big barrier even for really experienced SWEs. The new coding TUIs are a more gentle introduction to that.
  - goku12 8mo ago
    > ... because the discoverability is lower than GUIs. The UI paradigm created by the emacs transient package [1] can improve the discoverability of CLI commands significantly. It's one of the components of magit, the famous git frontend, that makes it so awesome. It's discoverability is very close to that of GUIs and somehow even more pleasing to use than GUIs. I wonder if someone is trying this on terminals. [1] https://github.com/magit/transient https://github.com/magit/transient
  - WD-42 8mo ago
    I think people simply don't like to read or write. --help is probably as discoverable as it gets.
  - Vegenoid 8mo ago
    The program perhaps most responsible for the renewed interest in the terminal, Claude Code, is made with React. Life moves pretty fast.
- sshine 8mo ago
  I remember the first time I heard a girl use the word "lol" (early 2000s) and thought to myself: Normies have hit the internet. I've used a terminal as my main interface FOREVER, and I'm amazed that people are joining this healthy habit of interacting with the computer as CREATORS.
- edgyquant 8mo ago
  Vibe coding is the first thing I’ve seen that has normies using the terminal
robinwhg 8mo ago
He was on a podcast recently where he talked about that a little. It’s on Youtube.
mitchellh 8mo ago
Overall I would describe it as "amusing." If you told me 3 years ago that terminal usage would _increase_ I would've laughed. Beyond that, I'm now having regular conversations with the frontier agentic coding companies (since they're far and away the largest terminal users at the moment) and if you had told me 2 years ago that that would be happening because of a terminal, I would've laughed even harder. So, it's amazing. But overall, its amusing.
- xeonmc 8mo ago
  Would a terminal deal with them have added another billion to your account if it hadn’t been nonprofit?
  - mitchellh 8mo ago
    Probably not. I don't know. Who cares.
nine_k 8mo ago
/* Claude Code is the strongest case of the return to the mainframe: a closed, bespoke, paid service that nothing locally run compares to. Terminals are just a natural part of the mainframe world! */

by WD-42 8mo ago

txdv 8mo ago

Once he fixes the past he will have more time to fix the future

pkulak 8mo ago

Wait, really? So I’ve used the terminal for everything for decades, and now, because of vibe coding, all The Kids have joined me? I don’t even know how to feel about that. Better terminals are nice though.

thewebguyd 8mo ago
Right? It’s been kind of funny watching everyone “rediscover” the terminal and I’m over here feeling like a true graybeard “silly kids, I’ve been here the whole time.” What’s old is new again is apparently just as true in tech as it is in fashion.
- rvz 8mo ago
  It's because the web developers who destroyed the web are now taking their mess with them into more obscure places, such as terminals, hardware and AI. That's probably why it is so hyped up as it is right now.
  - xeonmc 8mo ago
    Embrace, Embellish, Enshittify.
  - ulf-77723 8mo ago
    Why the hate against web developers?
    - eMPee584 8mo ago
      Because of all the laggy javascript, wasting precious compute and gigawatts of power just to make buttons dance, track us and shove ads up ours? Websites used to be below 100KiB - now they come with MEGABYTES of obfuscated JS.. wtf Though obviously, it's not the individual developer to blame but the incentive system.
    - TheFlyingFish 8mo ago
      The HN zeitgeist has something of a love/hate relationship with the web, I've noticed. HN in general seems to skew a little older than a lot of online communities, so a lot of HN users were adults back in the early days of the web/Usenet/etc. There's a tendency to view those days with nostalgia, leading a lot of people to feel like the "good old days" of the web were "ruined" by the modern shift into more interactivity, fancier/prettier design, etc. And "web developers" are the ones proximately responsible for the shift, so they get the hate too. I laugh every time I see someone on HN asserting that the web "shouldn't" be used for anything beyond "documents and lightly interactive content", which is not uncomment. There's some real old-man-yelling-at-clouds energy there.
      - ethbr1 8mo ago
        It basically boils down to: (a) 90s web developers tended not to have computer science backgrounds and weren't aware of fundamentals -> (b) when js frameworks exploded in popularity and diversity in the 00s, there was much wheel reinventing, because those developers (and to a lesser degree framework inventors) were often ignorant of wheels -> (c) there are persistent, fundamental mistakes* in the web ecosystem that could have been fixed at the start if anyone with experience had been asked. All of those people are now the vibe coders of the 20s, and it's going to end up in the same dumpster fire of 'Who knew it might be a good idea to cryptographically sign and control library packages in a public repository?' * Note: I'm distinguishing things going sideways despite best intentions and careful planning from YOLO + 'Oops, how could that possibly have happened?' shit
- james_marks 8mo ago
  The terminal was _always awesome_, the bar to realized that was just a tad high for many people. Until now!
  - pizza 8mo ago
    here-doc usage has probably 100x-ed in the last year
    - monster_truck 8mo ago
      It's 1,000,000,000,000x easy. Have found enough annoying bugs in powershells implementation of it that I know nobody is using it.
      - eyeris 8mo ago
        How so?
lovecg 8mo ago
Yeah it’s been amusing to see people rediscovering tmux as well
chrysoprace 8mo ago
I think terminal workflows are intimidating for a lot of people, because the discoverability is lower than GUIs. You can't necessarily intuit how a CLI works, you have to read the documentation or watch a tutorial, which my 10 years in the IT industry has taught me a big barrier even for really experienced SWEs. The new coding TUIs are a more gentle introduction to that.
- goku12 8mo ago
  > ... because the discoverability is lower than GUIs. The UI paradigm created by the emacs transient package [1] can improve the discoverability of CLI commands significantly. It's one of the components of magit, the famous git frontend, that makes it so awesome. It's discoverability is very close to that of GUIs and somehow even more pleasing to use than GUIs. I wonder if someone is trying this on terminals. [1] https://github.com/magit/transient https://github.com/magit/transient
- WD-42 8mo ago
  I think people simply don't like to read or write. --help is probably as discoverable as it gets.
- Vegenoid 8mo ago
  The program perhaps most responsible for the renewed interest in the terminal, Claude Code, is made with React. Life moves pretty fast.
sshine 8mo ago
I remember the first time I heard a girl use the word "lol" (early 2000s) and thought to myself: Normies have hit the internet. I've used a terminal as my main interface FOREVER, and I'm amazed that people are joining this healthy habit of interacting with the computer as CREATORS.
edgyquant 8mo ago
Vibe coding is the first thing I’ve seen that has normies using the terminal

robinwhg 8mo ago

He was on a podcast recently where he talked about that a little. It’s on Youtube.

mitchellh 8mo ago

Overall I would describe it as "amusing." If you told me 3 years ago that terminal usage would _increase_ I would've laughed. Beyond that, I'm now having regular conversations with the frontier agentic coding companies (since they're far and away the largest terminal users at the moment) and if you had told me 2 years ago that that would be happening because of a terminal, I would've laughed even harder. So, it's amazing. But overall, its amusing.

xeonmc 8mo ago
Would a terminal deal with them have added another billion to your account if it hadn’t been nonprofit?
- mitchellh 8mo ago
  Probably not. I don't know. Who cares.

nine_k 8mo ago

/* Claude Code is the strongest case of the return to the mainframe: a closed, bespoke, paid service that nothing locally run compares to. Terminals are just a natural part of the mainframe world! */