https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-fpp
https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-copycat
https://github.com/Morantron/tmux-fingers
https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-urlview
Any configuration or plugin that leans on the built-ins is probably going to be faster, so consider that w/r/t tmux-copycat.
I also really like tmux-resurrect, which saves and restores sessions for you; tmux-continuum, which runs those automatically; and the tmux-zen plugin for Oh-My-Fish:
https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect
https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum
https://github.com/sagebind/tmux-zen/tree/master
It's pretty easy to get a very nice tmux setup going!
I used to write like that when I was a teenager. I guess it's a subtle way of rebelling against "the system". But seeing adults do that, especially in a professional setting, is cringey.
I think many of us abandoned it when we went professional. Or abandoned it in those contexts but still do it in others. I don't do it on HN, clearly - but I do it almost everywhere else. It's much more natural to me to skip capitals.
I believe there was also a period in the transition to ubiquitous smartphones where it wasn't an option to turn off auto-caps, or maybe there just wasn't the fine-grained control of which auto-correct you use on mobile devices that there is now. I suspect that killed some all-lowercase habits. I think that's why I ended up with a "normal" style on HN where I use caps and normal punctuation (I don't usually use periods for sentences that terminate a paragraph outside of HN.)
However, for speed, I have recently abandoned capitalization and punctuation when interacting with LLMs, unless they are critical for clarity. I wonder if this is why many folks in the AI crowd write everything in lowercase.
Stock Vim (without `tmux`) can actually do most of what's shared in this post with `rg --vimgrep restore_tool | vim -c cb -` (`vim -c cb -` is my favorite feature in Vim; I find it strange that it's so rarely used or talked about).
(Since re-running the `rg` search can be undesirable, and I often like to analyze results in a terminal before opening them in Vim. I use a custom `tmux` command to copy the output of the last command [using this trick that involves adding a Unicode character to your prompt https://ianthehenry.com/posts/tmux-copy-last-command/], then I send that into Vim with e.g., `tmux saveb - | vim -c cb -`.)
Care to explain what it does? Trying `ls | vim -` and `ls | vim -c cb -` I don't immediately see a difference.
E.g., your example doesn't do anything because `ls` doesn't output `grep` format lines. So try piping the output of `grep` (you'll need flags for the line number and column number with `grep`, hence the `--vimgrep` flag above) matching the above format (or you could try `ls | sed 's/$/:0:0/' | vim -c cb -`, which will hack `ls` output to grep, and is occasionally useful).
(Note that the above hints at another useful tip, `grep` parsing is only part of what `cb[uffer]` does, it can also parse compile output, e.g., something like `gcc foo.c | vim -c cb -` will jump to the first compile error in your program and put the rest of the errors in the quickfix list).
Similar behavior with :grep inside Vim which you can change your grepprg to rg if you like.
I've got a feeling the `| vim -c cd -` isn't as commonly known because the Vim-initiated versions are somewhat more commonly known. It's handy to know that vim can do it in both "directions" (initiated from the external shell / initiated to the internal shell support).
```some examples " Quick access to commonly edited config files (and a directory for my Shell scripts!) map <leader>v :e ~/.vimrc<cr> map <leader>V :source ~/.vimrc<cr> map <leader>w :e ~/Workspace/myCo/tmuxp-session.yaml<cr> map <leader>W :e ~/.tmux.conf<cr> map <leader>z :e ~/Shell<cr>
" Super simple in editor note setup, amazing map <leader>x :vs<cr>:e ~/Documents/notepad.txt<cr> map <leader>X :vs<cr>:e ~/Documents/notes<cr>
" Quick terminal pane map <leader>t :vs<cr><c-w>l:term<cr><c-w>j:q<cr> " Pull file path into clipboard nmap <leader>b :let @+ = expand("%")<cr> " Pull current line into clipboard nmap <leader>B "*yy ```
Quick disposable terminals, tons of short cuts to get me into the config files that make it all happen (vimrc, zshrc, tmux.conf, a tmuxp session file) and to reload them, and super quick access to a well organized directory of notes are all huge boons during my workday.
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
set showmatch
set nohlsearch
set background=dark
syntax on
That said, yeah, it certainly doesn’t Just Work out of the box the way something like vscode does.
- in Emacs' Eshell, one can pipe results in and out of buffers, e.g., you can run a command, then pipe it to grep/ripgrep, then pipe the results into a buffer (without any intermediate files).
- Conversely, you can read a buffer content and pipe it into a command.
- Or you can do simple calculations, you just need to use prefix notation e.g. `* 3 42` or `(* 2 pi)`.
- You can run regular emacs functions, like `dired .` or `magit-status`, `find-file ~/foo` or `(calendar)`.
- Or you can use Emacs vars and functions directly, e.g., `cd $org-directory`, or `cd (projectile-project-root)`, or `mkdir (format-time-string "backup-%Y%m%d")`
- You can absolutely delegate some (potentially long running) tasks to run in an outside terminal. I wrote this command eshell-send-detached-input-to-kitty¹, it uses Kitty Terminal's socket control feature.
There are integrations that you can only dream about, one recent example is John Wiegley (creator of Eshell) and Karthik (author of gptel package) having to experiment with piping things in and out of LLMs.
Sure, the backwards is also possible - you can emacs from a terminal, but terminaling from inside emacs is way more cooler.
___
¹ https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/blob/main/modules/custom/sh...
Trying to bootstrap a Python setup "that just works™" is also a common struggle e.g. in Emacs world. Python tools are just a bunch of contraptions built with fiddlesticks and bullcrap. Anyone who tells you differently either already have learned how to navigate that confusing world and totally forgot "the beginner's journey"; or too new and have not tussled with its tooling just yet; or simply don't know any better.
Welcome to ANSI escape sequences. The left arrow key, for example, is really just <Esc>[D . You can see this stuff for yourself by running `cat >/dev/null` (cat isn't actually doing anything useful here, it's just allowing you to type without the shell getting in the way and actually, you know, making an attempt to interpret the keys you press). Press backspace to figure out which bytes are represented by 1 and which by 2 characters. 2-character sequences where the first is a caret (^) can be produced by ctrl + the second character, and correspond to the second character in ASCII minus 64. Hence ^A is byte 0x01. The escape key sends ASCII ESC, number 27, and is written ^[ .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code
Software distinguishes between a bare Escape key press and an ANSI escape sequence by waiting a couple of milliseconds and seeing if more bytes arrive. The number of milliseconds is often configurable, with e.g. the 'escape-time' config key in tmux and the 'ttimeoutlen' setting in vim.
You mentioned the arcane keyboard shortcuts of tmux. I'm curious if you or others here have tried/use byobu (which I think of as a wrapper around tmux, basing most commands on the F# row). I was shown it a decade ago and have used it since (after a couple prior years of primitive tmux use).
> You mentioned the arcane keyboard shortcuts of tmux.
oh, i've remapped almost all the shortcuts in tmux. `ctrl-k` is not the default prefix and `h` is not the default key for "select pane left".
i haven't tried byobu but from skimming the readme i expect it not to have a ton other than nicer default key bindings, and i'd rather not add more layers to my terminal.
But for whatever reason, I'd rather vimdiff when I have to resolve conflicts on rebase.
What I really hate about VSCode currently is how huge pylance is though, and how it's all up in my grill when I am trying to manually code.
Emacs has TRAMP mode - stands for “Transparent Remote (file) Access, Multiple Protocol", it lets you:
- Edit files as if they were local: /ssh:user@host:/path/to/file
- Chain connections: /ssh:jumphost|ssh:target:/file for bastion hosts
- Access Docker containers: /docker:container:/etc/config
- Edit Kubernetes pods: /kubectl:pod:/app/settings
- Sudo seamlessly: /sudo::/etc/hosts or /ssh:host|sudo::/etc/config
- And even combine them: /ssh:server|docker:container|sudo::/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
What you get? Transparent integration - Dired, Magit, etc, they just work. There's no context switching - you stay in your configured Emacs environment. Your keybindings, packages, customizations remain the same. It's multiprotocol: Supports SSH, FTP, SMB, ADB (Android), and more.
Maybe you have no idea how much Elisp code is out there in the wild. There is a LOT of things written in Emacs Lisp. Elisp is probably the most widely used Lisp, with the global total codebase amount exceeding both Clojure and Common Lisp combined.
There are things built into Emacs that some specialized apps don't even have. Did you know that Emacs has built-in lunar and solar calendars, for example?
Just by comparing the sheer amount of code, of course vim+tmux may feel less complicated - they give you fewer opportunities to encounter complexity because they offer significantly less functionality out of the box.
if shells exposed a scrollback api with line refs and structural tagging, we could annotate paths, link to buffers, diff last two runs, all without re executing anything. that would cut through half the indirection in current workflows. tmux's regex jump is a hack but it hints at a deeper model. scrollback should be its own memory layer
Several attempts have been made to do similar things in Unix, but there's a massive ecosystem problem: four decades of classic tooling has to be totally rewritten to get this kind of support. I don't see it happening without some kind of industry champion who can throw their weight around to force it on people.
There is an xterm command for writing the scrollback buffer to a file so in theory if you wanted a hack to enable it today you could use that + grep (or even trigger it with something xdotool if you wanted to automate it.)
I’m guessing some people already have these capabilities integrated into terminal workflows and I’d love to see a demo/setup.
I use aider + neovim FITM plugin (with qwen coder.) It's nice because it not only can help me with code problems but the often more frustrating tool problems.
I am on CC pro but I think to get the 100 or 200$ abonnements.
bind-key -n M-F1 select-window -t :0
bind-key -n M-F2 select-window -t :1
bind-key -n M-F3 select-window -t :2
bind-key -n M-F4 select-window -t :3
bind-key -n M-F5 select-window -t :4
bind-key -n M-F6 select-window -t :5
bind-key -n M-F7 select-window -t :6
bind-key -n M-F8 select-window -t :7
bind-key -n M-F9 select-window -t :8
bind-key -n M-F10 select-window -t :9
bind-key -n M-F11 select-window -t :10
bind-key -n M-F12 select-window -t :11Emacs and Vim are perfectly capable of taking arbitrary strings (which can be lines from the same terminal buffer that match a given regex) and putting them onto the command line of a terminal buffer. And more importantly, you can customize that whole process without writing C.
>interacting with the terminal requires either a dedicated plugin or opening another nested terminal emulator
This is not true, you can run any terminal command in vim's command mode like :!git show HEAD, you can autocomplete it, pipe output where you need it etc without ever getting away from the file you're currently editing. You can also use % to substitute the current open file path in the command like :!git add %
And for package persistence I have an extra configuration to use Brew. It all works beautifully and very fast/no noticeably latency on a capable VM/vps etc:
https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-kasm/
https://gist.github.com/jgbrwn/3787259bc7d00fce3fdd4b5bd579c...
https://gist.github.com/jgbrwn/28645fcf4ac5a4176f715a6f9b170...
atuin is make-or-break, its a bigger deal than zoxide and being a coder without zoxide is like being an athlete with shoes for a different sport.
asciinema is a better way to do terminal videos.
Its weird that this is weird now: having your tools wired in used to be called "being a programmer". VSCode and Zed and Cursor and shit are useful additions to the toolbox, you gotta know that stuff by heart now too and you have to know which LLM to use for what, but these things are the new minimum, they aren't a replacement for anything. Even with Claude Code running hot at 4am when the PID controller is wide open, sometimes its going to trash your tree (and if it doesnt youve got it on too short a leash to be faster than gptel) and without magit? gl.
If you think you're faster than OP with stock Cursor? Get them to make a video of how to use an LLM with chops.
That's not to say that tooling doesn't matter at all. Just that, historically, it's been a relatively minor factor. Maybe LLMs have changed that, or are about to.
An athlete with shoes for a different sport might run 5% slower. In a winner-takes-all competitive environment, that's fatal; a sprinter that ran 5% slower than the gold medalist is just another loser. Most programmers, however, win by collaboration, and on a relatively smooth fitness landscape, not a winner-takes-all spike. Even in winner-takes-all regions like startups, failure always results from bigger errors. I think nobody has ever said, "My startup would have succeeded if we'd used Dvorak keyboards instead of QWERTY", or vim instead of VSCode, or vice versa. It's always things like feuding cofounders, loss of motivation, never finding product-market fit, etc.
It's like when people complain that leetcode is nothing like the job: yeah, it's a pretty bad test, but you're making a bad argument about that because CS knowledge is extremely relevant to the job, unless the job is assembly-line library composition.
I've consulted for companies that had all their dev boxes on coder or something, and you get really good at vscode really fast or you don't have much luck. It's more than 5%, but even stipulating that it's 5%, whoa, 5 percent?! By installing a bunch of stuff off a list on GitHub and dropping some aliases in your bashrc or zshrc? in a few weeks you're five percent more effective? Anyone in any field from banking to bioinformatics would think you were joking or a scam artist if you offered them 5% more efficient outcomes at that price.
Regarding OG editors like ed and ex and sam and stuff? I can absolutely believe that someone with a lifetime mastery of one of those tools could smoke a VSCode user, it's not at all obvious that VSCode is an upgrade to vim/etc. along any dimension other than low barrier to entry. ditto emacs which is about 1000x more powerful than vscode and the difference in library/extension ecosystem is not measured by size: the emacs one is identical to the vscode one with bottom 90% by quality sliced off the vscode one.
And this stuff compounds, you get a bit better at the tools and you can read more code faster, read the right code faster, start moving the derivative of the derivative.
It's also extremely non-obvious that collaboration at the kinds of scales and complexities that make exceptional skills or experience in it a top 3-5 core competency for people doing most software. Study after study going back to Fred Brooks and the Mythical Man Month have demonstrated that relatively small teams of people who get along very well coordinated by a relatively small number of highly technical managers who take the offload on the high-complexity cross-org collaboration is the golden ticket. It's the same reason computers have dedicated routing tables in the NIC and that those things talk to even bigger and more specialized machines that do all routing all day: you don't want to scale O(n^M) with the communication overhead.
A hacker needs to work really well with their immediate team, and have a good dialog with a manager who is both technical (to understand the work) and who devotes a lot of energy to complex collaboration.
> And this stuff compounds, you get a bit better at the tools and you can read more code faster, read the right code faster, start moving the derivative of the derivative.
I think you're overestimating how much tool choice impacts developer productivity.
Yes, using good tools is important. Being comfortable with and knowing your way around your toolset will make your life easier. But it won't make you a better programmer. It won't "smoke" anyone else. It's not a competition.
The time we spend reading and writing code is relatively minor compared to the time we spend thinking, designing, communicating, and collaborating with others. Reading and writing code is not the productivity bottleneck. It's understanding what you're reading, making a mental model of the system, and thinking about how to translate your thoughts into working code. The mechanical aspects of it are relatively insignificant. Especially nowadays when we have LLMs to automate those mechanical parts, for better or worse.
For professionals it's absolutely a competition, but I'll also agree that engineers overvalue their environment setup.
You sure? Programming is an act of creation. Any [good] creative worker - artists, sculptors, novelists, potters, bakers, et al. would agree that being an artist means finding joy in refining your technique, investing in your tools, searching for new recipes, and experimenting. Being a programmer is not about achieving better productivity percentages. As far as I know, most of the best-known programmers have never participated in competitive programming challenges. Tooling may not matter to building a product, yet the product is built by programmers, and tooling is very much everything to them. Good programmers do invest in their tooling, not because it's a universal rule they have to follow or because it gives them a competitive edge. They do it simply because they enjoy the process.
Though it's challenging to determine whether someone who loves exploring and refining their tools will excel in a specific team, one truth remains: those who don't engage with their tools likely aren't strong programmers, as they most likely fundamentally lack passion for programming itself.
I know what OP is referring to. Back in the day, a programmer was expected to have built their own toolbox of utility scripts, programs and configurations that would travel with them as they moved from project to project or company to company. This is akin a professional (craftsman, photographer, chef, electrician, etc.) bringing their own tools to a jobsite.
A good dev can produce excellent results rapidly in an entirely "naked" environment. Sure, good tools might help, but you're looking at improvements in the margins - and a lot of this is about your personal joy, not productivity.
If the rate at which you generate value is noticeably gated by which IDE you use... well, you've got a long and exciting journey ahead of you. It's going to be fun, and I don't mean that facetiously.
"knowing your tools" was never called "being a programmer". Best devs I've ever worked with all did absolutely amazing work with more/grep/vi and a lot of thinking. And the thinking is where the value was created. That's still true, even if you throw an LLM into the mix.
It's apparently black magic, according to team members. But it's extremely productive to be able to develop in a terminal. Not only is it extremely productive, but it's also extremely extensible -- you can export your workflow in a script and use that same workflow in CI/CD. Running the same thing in the cloud and on your local workstation is... beyond productive.
tl;dr: learn how to use vim (or emacs, you heathen!) and you will get waaaaay better at writing software. You'll start to miss having pipes when you're forced to use GUI apps.
jonjacky•6h ago
Hard_Space•5h ago
(In case not obvious, current title is 'I use my terminal')
IAmBroom•5h ago
adolph•4h ago
fitsumbelay•5h ago
Plus one for pro-terminal posts. As a chromebooker I've found that all I need is terminal and browser. Switching to my Mac OS seems kinda maximalist and I rarely use much outside of the terminal and, you know, more browsers
babelfish•5h ago
progbits•5h ago
littlerbooks•4h ago
happytoexplain•4h ago
(I could be wrong about that)
Stratoscope•4h ago
indigodaddy•4h ago
Stratoscope•4h ago
rbanffy•4h ago
osmsucks•5h ago
philwelch•2h ago