Ask HN: Would you be interested in using the terminal for productivity?

[josephycyeh]

Hi! My name is Joseph and I am a second year CS student. I basically live in the terminal and do everything there developer-wise, and I thought it would be cool if I build a productivity tool within the terminal, something like reading emails or sending files to people?

The Terminal makes doing things so much faster and easier when you know how to use it, maybe this would be useful to people in other industries to boost their productivity?

[danielEM]

Was in banking industry for years, and when I started there were tons of financial terminal based systems for employees. And it was productive for very few only, learning curve was enormous and it was also very error prone.

[josephycyeh]

Yeah I can understand how it would be error prone, do you think it would work if it was integrated into existing systems?

[zzo38computer]

If the same protocols/file formats were used, then it seem like it would help (since then different people can use different programs and they would then be interoperable). For email, this is already the case. For sending files, I am not sure if it is, but it could be made to do so without so much difficulty.

[zzo38computer]

I do things like this when possible, actually. I already have such programs.

[josephycyeh]

Do you mind sharing what kind of programs?

[zzo38computer]

Well, to send files, I either just use email or copy the file to somewhere in /var/www if the file is public, or use netcat to send the file directly to the recipient. For email, I use Heirloom-mailx. For NNTP, I use bystand (my own software).