Why are there so many companies trying to reinvent the terminal (badly)?

The inflow of new engineers which are not so familiar with traditional tools like a basic terminal and a text editor. That was all which was needed to write software. Most of the software stack was quite flat back then. Today, the way everyone starts is by installing a bunch of tools, frameworks and an IDE to navigate through those tools. Even a simple web page requires to install 100MBs of dependencies. Trying to learn those tools from scratch is not useful because it's all abstracted and is almost never dealt with. These terminals are making the use of those tools simpler using features like autocompletes, suggestions, metadata about the command etc. It's just like how an IDE became necessary for some languages like .NET or Java because it was no longer just the language. For terminals it's now good 'ol coreutils vs a bunch of npm crap.

I personally don't like to use pimped up terminals because they are written in electron and are not portable. The whole point of using a minimal terminal is being snappy and portable. Just like engineers today can't write code without autocomplete, new engineers won't be able to navigate the cli without assistance.

An analogy would be, vim purists with 0 config vs people who have elaborate configs.

For market no idea.

For electron, because it is the only reasonable multi platform UI platform out there. I do not like that fact but it is true.

For why, because the terminal protocol is atrocious, mix data with control signalling, mix together multiple layers making it really hard to extend it, is stuck emulating an emulator of a physical device from the 70s, is bursting at the seams and is blocking dozens of possibilities in ergonomics that would make our industry kill less people.

Is it well done or can it make money ? I doubt it. Is there an obvious need with wide impact? Fuck yes.

Can we acknowledge that just because we don’t have a particular problem, doesn’t mean other people won’t? Will these companies be profitable? I have no idea. No one does. But I don’t understand this sentiment unless you’re being forced to use their product.

When you start investing you quickly realize how difficult it is to gauge a “good” idea. The only thing that matters is how the market responds and it seems like these solutions have a small, dedicated and quickly growing user base.

What is the problem with that ? I've tried both warp.dev and fig.io, except thier annoying telementry events, I love them both.

Developers use terminals frequently, and there have been no major improvements in terminal software in the last few years. I'd be happy to see more terminals developed because they are useful. I would rather encourage them than discourage it

Why do comedians make jokes about hotels and airplane food? Because it's what they live and breathe every day. It doesn't mean that audiences want those jokes.

The demand for fancy terminals is unproven, but anybody who's pressed in their shell or tried to process files with shell pipelines has thought - this could be better.

I am always curious to see new approaches to the classical terminals that i've been using for 20+ years now. So i don't mind this trend.

What i've seen so far was mostly aesthetics and less "functional" stuff, which makes me wonder: Maybe there isn't that much to improve?

made me think about my NEED of what I have regarding terminals.

I think I am using about 2% of the potential of what the terminal is offering me.

So my need for a new terminal app would be one which - undisruptive - trains me to unlock more and more power of the terminal.

first idea, a panel on the right hand side which explains what I just did, highlights pot improvements (how I could have chained the last 5 tasks) and explains similar or pot. next steps.

A beginners terminal.

What are your unmet needs in regards of the terminal app?

Same with "MLOps" tools... same with every niche, bunch of useless tools just trying to grab some market.

But this is not a recent thing, every time the current thing gets flooded with crap ideas competing for some market share (ie longtail theory).

Sometimes the old ideas are just rebuilt, nocode is just RAD with different branding, event sourcing is just ESB, microservices is basically SOA...

What is scary that actually very little is being created, and a huge amount of crap just resuscitates from old tech, or is a skewed version of some working technology which tries to make it different so it doesn't look like a complete ripoff.

I love terminals, but honestly there isn't much to improve there IMHO is already good, I admire those who try and honest people who try to get a good idea into the market, I despise completely people trying to push any random hello world as a product which is basically a spyware full of trackers.

The thing you’ve described hasn’t happened though. You’re really talking about two recent projects - Fig and Warp - neither of which are Electron and only one of which is a terminal. It’s true however that both of them have been rightly criticised for their frankly offensive telemetry shit.

I like the interest in modernizing the terminal as an interface. There's still room for innovation and improvement. That's probably the big reason. Unfortunately this push is mired in app culture yak shaving bloatware bullshit (with a few exceptions). I'm surprised the market hasn't been flooded with Web3 DAPP terminal apps that will "revolutionize the terminal somehow, bro". Anyway, I love the enthusiasm but I'm not using a 100MB+ terminal app that requires a cloud account. I'll keep on BASHING like its 1989, thank you.

Human centered design research established long ago that GUI applications are easier to learn and easier to use. Terminals are a good 'lowest common denominator' due to their simple design and low cost implementation. People want the benefits of GUI with the portability of terminal applications which has resulted in ASCII-art boxes, menus, progress bars, trees, etc. These fancy new terminal emulators further enable these high-end-for-a-terminal-though-low-end-for-a-GUI features.

> why do companies think this is a market worth pursuing

Maybe because the terminal is one of the last frontiers in computing where potential users with deep pockets still have their privacy?

Those who do not understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it…

As someone who doesn't use any of these terminal-modernizing tools: because terminals are archaic and mediate most of the important engineering work done in tech? It doesn't seem complicated. What's weirder is fixity the terminal interface has compared to the rapid evolution of all our other tools, from text editors to database interfaces.

I believe that this is partially because default shells (mostly bash) are not 'really' beginner friendly, and you usually need to spend some time configuring them to be comfortable working with them. That said, i use fish shell so what do I know :)

It makes no sense to me as well. Iterm2 + zsh + oh-my-zsh + tmux and you have everything you need.

On linux I just use gnome-terminal + zsh + oh-my-zsh and I am perfectly capable. For me, this is a case of "it's not broke so why are you messing with it?"

I think it points to a lack of creativity, plus the modern surveillance economy. Try to sell someone what they already have, but with stalking built in, so you can skim off a profit for doing basically fuck all.

I think the more pertinent question is why these startups are receiving funding. A firm funding dev tools must have a few people who'll understand why these products will struggle to find a good market fit.

One thing is that terminals are a kind of magic. While the rest of the graphical interface gets bogged down with drawer pull animations and blinking buttons it can be possible to run a whole series of commands with reasonable responsiveness. Systems are drowning in response choking complexity. Did an app just start a download in the background? There is probably an app that will tell you, but even a bad terminal can probably tell you faster. It is a one size fits all immediate gratification head above the churning waves maneuver in an accessible package.

Dev tools are hot currently, VCs like it. That could be a reason

I haven't noticed them, could someone post links?

Is even worse. Is the same old, bad, ancient, archaic, obsolete, terminal thingy with a small improvement (https://github.com/nushell/nushell is the only I see that are half-there).

And it existed MUCH better tools for interactive programming (of the past) to copy instead.

I think it's in large part due to Hyper's original successes (that's Vercel's (fml. ZEIT) Electron-based terminal emulator, one of - if not THE - first of its kind).

There was a lot of hype built around it at the time, and a lot of people that used and believed in it. I think a lot of people saw that and thought "I could market that".

What is their business model? How could you possibly make money creating a new terminal?

Doubtless to show the output of their new text editor and packaging system.

it's one of those things that makes me want to quit technology, people get bored out of their minds and try to reinvent the wheel instead of doing something useful

Today, people like to collect data in all possible variations. The data itself can be sold, but equally they show that they can do it. so at best they can secure an order for data storage.

Strong 'old man yells at cloud' vibes here.

First, there's only 2 apps. Second, none of the terminals you're talking about is in Electron, and neither is cross-platform ( partially as a result). Fig isn't really a terminal for that matter.

So you're just ranting for ranting's sake without even understanding the subject?

As for what the market is, maybe they're trying to emulate Docker's switch to developer tooling and make money off enterprises buying team licenses. It's not the worst business model I've heard of, and could work if they get traction. And funnily that's where we get to the other part of your rant - telemetry. Without that data they have significantly lower chances of making it. I don't particularly trust their promises they'll make it opt-in once they've gained enough traction and data, but i think it's unfair to suggest they're collecting errors and usage patterns to sell that data ( which IMHO doesn't make sense, and they would need to warn users that's the case, thank you GDPR).

I think this was a very bad faith take. Try to spread some positivity!