[sramsay]

This has more-or-less been my setup for over twenty-five years. I've used gentoo and vim that entire time, but have changed desktops a few times (i3 currently, but always something along those lines). All development -- and all writing -- is in terminals.

The difference is that I tend to to work on pretty high-powered machines (not for graphics or gaming, but for audio).

But the main reason I have this set up is that I find the minimalism . . . calming? It's not entirely distraction free, but I just find it easier to work in a kind of low-stimulation environment. I do occasionally work on way less powerful rigs (and way more powerful servers), and it's nice that the basic tools don't change. But ultimately, I think my fondness for this way of working might be aesthetic.

[imoreno]

The main reason for me is that terminal programs are just less crappy, because people who develop them try much harder. The terminal itself strikes me as a terrible platform - no text sizes, no fonts, no graphics... People dismiss it as unnecessary bells and whistles but then every other TUI program jumps through ridiculous hoops to reinvent crappy versions of these.

If only the same people developed their programs with the same philosophy (minimal, simple, clean UI and keyboard driven) but in a normal GUI, so that you don't have to abuse Unicode to draw UI and just draw it.

[mid-kid]

This has been my take on things forever. Power user tools tend to be made as a TUI, which is great in that it lets you work from the framebuffer and over SSH, but it really makes you wonder why we can't have the same conveniences with proper graphics.

[the_snooze]

I'm in the same boat. I want my computing tools to feel like a musical instrument: stable and predictable, very capable but requires skill and learning to use well, and serves me instead of drawing attention to itself. Let me get into a flow state and focus on the task at hand. Working in a terminal is that.

If UIs are constantly shifting or if there are popups telling you about a "cool" new feature, then that software feels less interested in serving the user and more serving its developers. I don't want the manic Silicon Valley hype-of-the-month when I have other more important things to do than fight with technology that's supposed to be helping me (and me exclusively).

[mystified5016]

A craftsman becomes a master largely by mastering his tools.

When your tools change every damn week because some faceless soulless middle manager wants a promotion, you can't master the damn tools.

I don't know how anyone is supposed to become a master at programming when the industry standard tooling requires waiting around for tooltips to show up because meaningless icons are "clean"

[godelski]

Not only that, but a master craftsman modifies their tools and builds their own.

But it's not even that tools change every week. When you look at things like VSCode it's hard to make your own. Is hard to shape into an environment for you and instead you should shape to it. I see this in a lot of tools and it's destructive. Everyone is different and there's nothing that can be made for everyone. So a good tool needs to be modifiable, so that people can turn it into the thing that works for them.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

It rings true, but on the other end of the fence is management class, who wants and prefers that coders are not craftsmen with custom tooling, but interchangeable gears that can swapped at moments notice. In a sense, they want the same modularity, but at the organization level.

[godelski]

You get what you pay for. Unfortunately it appears many are happy with shit and those that are unhappy are unwilling to pay for more. I'll admit, it can be quite difficult to differentiate shit and quality these days prior to purchase. But at a certain point I think you have to stand up to the management class and take pride in your work. It's their job to manage you but it is also your job to make the best product you can. It's becoming pretty clear a lot of tech has been filled with "yes men" and we're seeing the consequences of this. The bigger problem is that I think a lot of people don't even know they are yes men. Probably doesn't help that we build things that are so technical that the public isn't accurately able to distinguish quality from shit until they are able to feel the two side my side.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

I hear ya. In fact, I will go as far as to say that it is only more recent that I call out my direct manager, when what he says something that does not quite make sense ( and it does not help that he keeps changing his mind ) for one reason or another. I think it takes not just experience and confidence, but decent degree of political skills ( and I certainly do lack confidence and political talent ). Not to mention, I distinctly remember feeling ( way back when I first questioned stuff and got punished for it ) that it is just 'easier' to be a 'yes man'.

[devdri]

Totally agree that the constant churn of new tools which come and go makes adapting to them and truly mastering them feel pointless. But there’s also the well established old things which (according to Lindy’s Effect) will be there for a long time still - things like Vim, Emacs, efficiently using shell. Investing time in truly mastering them seems like a good long term bet.