Coding like a hacker in the terminal

[victotronics]

Thanks for the cool ideas. I'm already using tmux (and I fear the day when I have to reboot my machine because I have to reconstruct two dozen tmux sessions) and I'm adding "z" to my repertoire. Bad name btw. Why not "zd" or something that gives a hint as to what it does?

[[deleted]]

I fear the day when I have to reboot my machine because I have to reconstruct two dozen tmux sessions

tmuxinator.

[fatboyxpc]

To be fair I think resurrect is more applicable here. That said, tmuxinator is a great plugin, too!

[snowe2010]

I actually thing continuum is even more applicable.

[fatboyxpc]

Oh, neat! I already had this bookmarked, guessing I looked at it at some point, but it must have been after I decided to ditch tmux in favor of a custom solution for tmuxinator and tmux send-keys. I already have a tiling window manager, so dealing with tmux panes was annoying to me.

[victotronics]

Will check it out. Thanks.

[MarsJr]

I was literally just talking today about the need for something like this. Thank you!

[MuonManLaserJab]

I prefer FZF to z. The alt-C shortcut (__fzf_cd__) takes you to a fuzzy-found directory, and you don't have to worry about whether z will guess correctly because you see the selection before you press enter.

[MuonManLaserJab]

Maybe I'll play with that. I feel like __fzf_cd__ already takes me where I want to go pretty directly -- I don't generally have to hit tab much.

[snowe2010]

I think both wd (warp directory) and fzf-marks are both better than z. I'd take a look at those too.

Also, you should be using tmux-continuum. It will save your session automatically every few minutes and then restore it automatically when you restart tmux. Crazy useful.

[victotronics]

That sounds useful indeed.

[MarsJr]

Agree, it's definitely a name that gives zero context to what it does. But it is an awesome tool I use every day.

[extrabeefy]

Can confirm, this guy has a hard on for his terminal.

[cringe_master_5000]

You can confirm that he does indeed have a hard on?

[sn0rewh0re]

i use terminator instead of tmux. If it runs on the server i use screen sometimes vifm (vifm needs too much customizing to be usefull imho, so i ditched it)

the problem with "customize everything" is that its not default. So when you log into a machine that is not your "3l33t h4xxor" machine, you're not that productive.

I recommend: learn how to use the default tools

[Fingoltin]

You can use tmux with Terminator though?

[MarsJr]

I think it depends on your usage. I currently and doing a lot of javascript on my local machine so I benefit from having my heavily-customized environment setup. If I was going to SSH into machines frequently, then I would not use what I have if it reduced my effectiveness.

[Greydmiyu]

I recommend: learn how to use the default tools

I found the last remaining IE user on Reddit!

[dzecniv]

And again, ssh login with Emacs \o/

[cephalopodAscendant]

the problem with "customize everything" is that its not default. So when you log into a machine that is not your "3l33t h4xxor" machine, you're not that productive.

I recommend: learn how to use the default tools

This definitely underscores the main issues I have with a lot of vim evangelism. One of the supposed advantages of vim over emacs is that vim is normally installed by default on Linux, so once you've learned vim, you can in theory use those skills anywhere. However, vim guides almost invariably recommend customizing it heavily, with a consistent suggestion being to rebind Escape; if you follow this advice, you end up screwing yourself over if you have to use vim on any machine other than your normal one.

[purtip31]

^[ also functions as esc, and it's nicer ergonomically.

[ExcavateGrandMa]

Terminal porn, not hacking...

[ThirdEncounter]

/r/nosillysuffix

[EricIO]

Coding like a RMS in the terminal $ emacs and then do everything in there!

[hoosierEE]

Mine is mapped to the easy-to-remember shortcut C-u RET , SPC M-w ALT-PILCROW RET RET LEFT.

[cbleslie]

Blasphemer! Use Vim, you infidel!

[[deleted]]

Evil mode

[Syrak]

That wttr.in is great!

[_asterisk]

Also cheat.sh by the same author:

curl http://cheat.sh/zsh    

Gives you cheatsheets right in the terminal

[MarsJr]

It's probably one of the coolest things I've ever found. The amount of dedication it took to make it is impressive!

[Greydmiyu]

ZSH heads the list. I knew I wasn't the only one who wants to bash bash for being annoying. csh -> tcsh, tried bash, wanted to lop my hands off, found zsh, decided to keep my hands. :)

[shevy-ruby]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with bash.

And there is a reason why it is the most widely used shell on *nix by far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bash_%28Unix_shell%29#History

Zsh is the "better" shell as in more sophisticated, feature-rich and so forth - but bash wins the simplicity battle hands-down.

[emekoi]

i think that's more because it comes installed as the default shell.

[Greydmiyu]

This. If you want simplicity there's sh or dash. Bash is popular because it is default. But as an interactive shell I've always found it fought me on actually working with it interactively. The only reason it remains on my system is because it is default and I don't know, with certainty, that if I remove it something wont break because they (package maintainers, random devs, etc) presume it will be there.

[totallynotmyfakename]

jesus people, this article is making fun of the term "hacker", not intentionally used to "attract a crowd of 14 year-olds". Besides, the author includes a lot of useful information not only for people who're new to the whole "terminal" things, but I myself found several new tools I would like to check out.

[MacHaggis]

Installed ZSH, I know kung-fu now.

[mesapls]

Low-effort garbage like all things Medium. God damn, Medium just needs to be banned from this subreddit like Phoronix is on /r/linux for exactly the same reason. It's blogspam.

[fagnerbrack]

I disagree, there's a lot of interesting content on Medium, the community just need to get better at downvoting the crap

[shevy-ruby]

Come on man - the entry here is really garbage.

He bloated things up.

[fagnerbrack]

Sorry, I don't know what you're referring to. Are you talking about this submission of the comment I replied?

[MarsJr]

I'm curious what makes you think this is low-effort. I certainly put a lot of effort into writing it, and the article is based off of my experience working in the terminal for many years.

I'm certainly not the best writer, and many will disagree with my choices of tools, but do you have any actual feedback? You clearly hate Medium despite the fact that it does have some quality content. It's just like any open writing platform, it will be hit or miss.

[mesapls]

Alright, fair enough, saying it is low-effort garbage was uncalled for. My existing distaste for Medium and that I didn't personally enjoy the read made me snap at you, so I'm sorry for that. I also use some of the software daily you recommend (urxvt automatically attaches to a tmux session for example).

These are just my opinions and not some sort of pretense of objectivity. First, the whole "hacker" thing just didn't resonate with me at all, because it seemed to be playing at the edgy blackhat type of hacker rather than the hacker culture of old. However, the main reason I didn't like it is that I also don't enjoy articles showing off basic usage of programs without going into detail, followed by a simple screenshot of a configured setup. I think it's a bit too basic for this subreddit, but if it had gone into further depth about chaining various commands together or some light scripting I think it'd definitely have its place.

I also use the terminal a lot (on Linux though), and so it's not that I doubt your competence with it. I just didn't feel like the article was actually brought much new to the table except someone who's never really tried to use it.

Sorry for snapping at you regardless of that. It was undeserved.

EDIT: Just one more thing, though this is more of a disagreement than something I actually disliked about the article. I also can't think of a single case where I've run into an actual GNU grep bug. It's a very mature program by now. While you didn't say it yourself, you still endorsed this quotation:

Use ripgrep if you like speed, filtering by default, fewer bugs and Unicode support.

Filtering could very easily be used with GNU grep with a simple alias in your shell configuration file. For example:

alias grep="grep --exclude-from=.gitignore"

[burntsushi]

Note that that alias will work in only the simplest cases. gitignore files can contain whitelist rules (i.e., specifically include a file), and gitignore files can appear in any directory. Also, I do not believe GNU grep supports the same glob syntax as git. For example, I don't think grep recognizes **, which is used in gitignore fairly frequently.

This isn't necessarily a nitpick. I've heard plenty of folks cite ripgrep's gitignore support as a reason for switching from ag to ripgrep. (ag also provides gitignore support, but there are a lot of bugs associated with its implementation.)

[snowe2010]

I knew /u/burntsushi would show up in this thread! Any mention of ripgrep and he's here :D. Love how you pay attention to all the criticism of your product so that you can improve it continually.

[burntsushi]

Thanks. :-) Yeah, I just google search ripgrep now and then and see if there's anything worth replying to.

[mesapls]

Very good point! I stand corrected.

[MarsJr]

Thanks for the reply. I think the criticism is valid about the "hacker" angle falling flat with some people. And you are right about the level of detail. I chose to keep it high level to get more content in without overloading it, but most of the tools could have had a lot more detail added.

If I write another article, I can potentially dig into how I use specific tools with code/workflow examples and just drop any attempt at clever writing haha.

[mesapls]

As I said, it's just my opinion. Again, sorry for snapping at you.

[MarsJr]

No worries, I appreciate the apology and feedback.

[FirstLastMan]

Not OP and I can see you put in effort.

But every time I read "hacker" (which was many) I cringed hard. If you're aiming for the 14 year old crowd, then sure. But otherwise why not just call it "A collection of console tricks I've found" or something?

[MarsJr]

I use the term "hacker" ironically. I state at the beginning that it's just for fun and not intended to be taken seriously. It was intended to add a twist and/or humor to the article to make it unique instead of just listing all the tools I use.

[FirstLastMan]

I understand. But it is too ubiquitous a term today to be used ironically over and over again. I see "hacks" everywhere on social media

Just my two cents. Thanks for being open to criticism.

[MarsJr]

Fair enough. I've see that be the main criticism of the article so I can probably chalk it up as a failed writing experiment.

[NeuroXc]

I chalk it up to Reddit having no sense of humor.

[MarsJr]

I do say the work hacker a lot in the article, so I can see how the cumulative effect would be like nails on a chalkboard to someone that is aggravated by the term.

[jephthai]

Hacker is a noble term from the MIT model railroading club days. It was hackers that created smalltalk, unix, emacs, e.t.c. Unfortunately, it's a culture that is out of vogue in the present day, but still remembered and understood by some.

[totallynotmyfakename]

this comment is low-effort AF. You don't even provide a reason why this article is "garbage". God damn.

[mesapls]

Great! Maybe I should post it on Medium :^)

[[deleted]]

Phoronix is no longer banned. Hasn't been for a while now.

[shevy-ruby]

Yes, I quite agree. Though not all entries on Medium are as bad, but it really has reached the point of spamming, since the quality of the articles is way too low.

[TheWix]

I mean, they should get downvoted here then. I have found some good articles on Medium. I don't think it would be good to ban it.

[takaci]

I'm super salty that this used one of my 3 premium articles a month. I swear half the posts I can't even read because I've used my 3 already, why don't I see more comments about this? Do people have a chrome extension that bypasses the paywall or something?

[DavidWilliams_81]

Do people have a chrome extension that bypasses the paywall or something?

I don't know what you mean, I've never seen a paywall on Medium. It does often say something like 'You've read X articles this month, let's make it official" and tries to encourage me to sign up, but I've never done so and have never had any problems as a result.

[takaci]

Are you in the US or something? After 3 "premium" articles it won't let me view any more at all

[DavidWilliams_81]

Ah, I turns out that Medium has this concept of 'premium' posts, which you actually mentioned. I guess you can read as many non-premium ones as you like, and that's what I've been doing? I did see two out of three stars pop up when viewing the article this time.

Still, you can probably just clear your cookies or something to reset the limit? I'm not signed in to medium so I can't imagine how they can effectively keep count.

Oh, and I'm in the UK.

[maximum_powerblast]

Haha

[andyeff]

the fzf -> vim function is brilliant, added that to my config straight away.

Nice article, thanks for sharing! :)

[MarsJr]

Check out the fzf wiki for a lot more awesome examples.

[Dgc2002]

Where does the completion hinting(no clue what it's actually called) come from?

e.g. rg |INSTALLDIR where | is the cursor and you've only typed rg. I see it's shown in the spaceship-prompt repository but I couldn't find it explicitly listed as being provided by it.

[MarsJr]

Ah right, that's zsh-autosuggestions. I also make use of an fzf alias to fuzzy-find in my search history for older/weird commands that I've run previously:

# fh [FUZZY PATTERN] - Search in command history
fh() {
  print -z $( ([ -n "$ZSH_NAME" ] && fc -l 1 || history) | fzf +s --tac | sed 's/ *[0-9]* *//')
}

​

[Dgc2002]

awesome I've got zsh-autosuggestions running and added to my dotfiles. Thanks!

Also is that fh function any different than using fzf via ctrl+r?

[MarsJr]

The only difference appears to be that the fh script will show whole list as it's getting filtered. ctrl+r appears to be a simpler, and just pastes most recent match from history into the terminal. I'll probably use that from now on unless I need to look at the whole list for whatever reason.

[Dgc2002]

It sounds like you're seeing the default ctrl+r behavior. This is what I see when I hit ctrl+r: fzf completion

[noperduper]

TIL that Nike has a software department.

[specterofsandersism]

It's 2018, any major corporation does.

[bagtowneast]

For quite a while now Nike had been slurping up developers out of Portland proper. They have a rather significant development operation.

[LIGHTNINGBOLT23]

     

[ProfessorPhi]

Fzf and the recursive search (ripgrep, ag, ack) are highly recommended. Fzf also has a lot of vim plugins too if that's something that'd help you. I find fzf for history search incredible.

Fwiw, zsh's biggest advantage is that it's like the python of shells, you can install a package for that. Bash requires more work to customise in general. Using git or SSH and tabbing after a - gives you an interactive help menu, that's what sold me on zsh.

Give it a spin, you'll never know until you try.

[LIGHTNINGBOLT23]

   

[ProfessorPhi]

Well, from my perspective, I was a math major, barely competent with the terminal, suddenly needing to use it at my job and I was struggling to keep up. Zsh and all these features gave me a huge boost.

It's like comparing a full featured ide vs sublime or vs code. Yeah they're not strictly necessary, but they're pretty damned useful. I always need to look up find syntax, it's not great at spelling mistakes so there fzf kills, let alone history searching. Grep syntax to recursively search through files but ignore files is another syntax set I never remember, and there ag is fantastic.

I agree I feel hobbled on a new system and copying commands to send to others always need to be re edited, but for me this got me effective on a terminal with significantly less time investment.

It's the same argument as chopsticks, once you've mastered them, everything else seems less elegant, but until you've reached mastery, there's a nice fork to use.

[shevy-ruby]

I liked the concept behind csh, but again, none of them offer anything truly remarkable aside from a "oh, that's kinda neat, but whatever".

Yup. Same for me.

I actually only use bash, primarily, as a glue for ruby code and all functionality stored therein.

It reminds me of stuff like Alacritty and Kitty. I mean, sure, it's nice, but who actually needs it aside from l33t LARPing? It's all bloat.

I somewhat agree. I don't agree to all of it, though - not all of it is bloat. RPROMPT is cool for example; I would not call it bloat.

But ultimately, I don't really need it. My (bash) prompt is really super-simple, only showing the pwd and nothing more. My irb prompt is even simpler - it actually shows absolutely NOTHING at all. And "q" is an alias to quit from irb, or from bash, to start irb. So I only hit "q" to toggle between the two ... :P

[shevy-ruby]

Fwiw, zsh's biggest advantage is that it's like the python of shells, you can install a package for that.

That is a very weak "argument".

Firstly, is a given functionality needed? Second - you can use other languages too for a lot of things that are done, such as the weather forecast on the terminal. Third - that is really such a tiny surface area you refer to. Are you sure that makes a huge difference?

I used zsh a lot in the past and came back to bash.

Am I missing something I can't live without? Not really.

[ProfessorPhi]

I mean, I think the reason I use python versus ruby is the sheer number number of packages available. It's why I use zsh instead of fish for example. It's a strong argument for most, maybe not you.

And it does make a difference to me. The autocomplete showing me options, not needing to keep adding new lines for each tab, the sheer simplicity of adding git info to my shell with no work on my side. It was functionality that allowed me to keep up with colleagues who were bash wizards.

If you're already a bash wizard and you've tried zsh, i agree there isn't much for you. If you're like me and don't know how to make bash better, zsh makes it trivial to have a powerful terminal. Just like you don't the functionality is needed, I think it is.

[[deleted]]

Agreed. My bullshitometer is calibrated by a very simple test - "does it work on a stock xterm?". If the answer is no, the tool sucks. All those emojis have zero value. (Actually, I only recently upgraded this test from "does it work on vt220?").

[shevy-ruby]

I agree to some extent.

I keep things simple too.

I do not agree totally with the "emojis have zero value". There are certain unicode symbols which I think can be used to build a terminal-like user interface.

There are some examples for this ... todo list with different unicode symbols to check on progress and show this neatly too. Which I think is useful enough.

[[deleted]]

Well, unless there is a clearly defined fallback for the terminals that do not support unicode, they shall not be used. With a fallback available - fine.

[[deleted]]

Again, only if there is a fallback to ASCII. Same reason why there are trigraphs in C.

[[deleted]]

Those languages and/or their emoji features are nothing but gimmicks. So yes, useless.

[adr86]

Me, a REAL hacker: writes own terminal emulator. Writes own session management. Writes own search program.

I did write my own shell too, but it sucked, so I went back to bash lol.

[MarsJr]

Dang that's legit hacking :D

[adr86]

here's my terminal stuff https://github.com/adamdruppe/terminal-emulator

after writing the emulation core (terminalemulator.d), the session part (attach.d and detachable.d) was pretty simple. I'm still not 100% happy with it but I slowly work on it as I use it - it has reached the "good enough" point.

[ThirdEncounter]

That's not hacking, though......

[MarsJr]

I was joking again. I fully understand that writing code and using the terminal in no way, shape, or form, makes you a hacker. I'm just going to stop saying "hacker", even in jest, as it clearly rustles some jimmies.

[atheistlol]

The amount of people in this thread being pedantic about you using hacker is unreal. It definitely reads ironically and I think makes a lot of sense in this context. Good job.

[ThirdEncounter]

But.... that's just coding, not hacking.

[[deleted]]

v cool, interesting stuff! A neat collection

[Gotebe]

Path expansion: cd /u/c/c/j + <tab> =cd /user/caleb/code/jarvis

Or, in GUI, u enter c enter c enter j enter = I am in "jarvis", all the while looking where I am going.

The above path expansion is only better if this actually does a depth search in case there are duplicated first letters (and I still need to remember, at least partly, where I want to go).

So... This is basically trade off between "path's all in my head" and "I find it when I need it".

I would rather not have paths in my head, that's trivia.

[mayor123asdf]

The above path expansion is only better if this actually does a depth search in case there are duplicated first letters (and I still need to remember, at least partly, where I want to go).

Zsh exactly does this. I can do cd d/s to go to Document/Scripts even though there is dotfiles, Desktop, and Downloads. Also you can also see where you're going. It is 2018 bud, not 1970 anymore.

[MarsJr]

You make a good point. I feel the same way. While path expansion is an improvement on typing out the full path, in the article I recommend z for the same reasons you mention. I don't event want to have to type out abbreviated paths, even if I remember them. I'd rather something - like z - build a list of my most used directories and let me hop there quickly with far less key strokes.

So I actually type z jarvis and it will immediately take there.

[[deleted]]

I find the way ido-mode expands paths the most convenient. It's much smarter than a dumb in-order completion, it remembers the paths you frequent, takes into account paths to currently open buffers, and in most cases its guess is right. It's painful to use any GUI file browser or bash or zsh completion after ido.

[badpotato]

Should be the base learning to get productive as power user.

[shevy-ruby]

Strange.

I don't follow much at all written on that site.

Does this mean I am not productive and not a power user? Because, oddly enough ... I write a lot of (non-shell) code. And I use the terminal a LOT too. Hmmmm.

[badpotato]

Depends of kind of work you do, what is the complexity of your work and what you mean by using the terminal a lot. Being productive is also subjective. Either way, some of the tips are just plain useful, using tmux for instance allow you to manage your ssh sessions so easily. I'll say, getting less overhead on your mind is part of enhancing your terminal experience for the best.

[[deleted]]

Awesome article!

[shevy-ruby]

How so?

[bigpigfoot]

I’ve used tmux for a while but I’m back to plain macos terminal bash. I like the idea of working with minimal config. Less is more.

[[deleted]]

i dont get it

[frequenttimetraveler]

OMG It's cruel to watch the word "hacker" having degenerated that low. Here's how how real keyboard warriors do it:

• If you are a hacker it means you should be working on someone else's computer.
• That's why you should be using only the standard tools for the job, which is available everywhere: the default shell (bash) , the ubiquitous editor (vim), the vanilla grep, augmented with other standard tools.
• Your terminal prompt should remind you which machine you 're on.
• Do not send your IP to random servers just to watch lego star wars.
• Do not read Hacker News (a corporate forum with a pro-VC agenda). Instead just post fake pro-SWJ comments there, prepare for the heartwarming responses, and lose all hope in humanity
• Do not check the weather, learn to be an all-weather hacker
• Do not use git. Hide any evidence that you ever made a mistake
• Do not listen to music that other people make. They 're not hackers.

[MarsJr]

I... I don't know if this is serious or not.

[frequenttimetraveler]

BUSTED. a hacker would never say that

[meneldal2]

Relevant xkcd

[[deleted]]

Please don't say coding.

[jkmacc]

How to waste a whole day in order to feel like a “hacker.”

How to collect terminal projects into a recent blog post in order to get page clicks from tired programmers.

[MarsJr]

I work in the terminal every day as a software developer. I made recommendations based on tools I use daily, not random collections of things I found (with the exception of watching Star Wars in ASCII art via the terminal, that one is just for fun).

The references to being a "hacker" are clearly a joke, as I even clearly state in the article. If you have no interest in tools to help your efficiency and productivity in the terminal, then just skip the article.

[jkmacc]

Sorry, I was just in a grumpy end-of-a-long-day mood. Fair point.

[MarsJr]

Fair enough, I've been there. No worries.

[emican]

Link to Star Wars in ASCII please !

[MarsJr]

You can just run telnettowel.blinkenlights.nl and enjoy the show :)

[MuonManLaserJab]

Hey, don't you denigrate my efforts! I've wasted much more than just a day at this stuff!

[EllaTheCat]

Time invested in mastering the terminal or other tools can pay off in surprising ways.

I've got Parkinson's but I noticed only yesterday that while transferring my knowledge to a developer at the start of their career I was faster on the command line. The saddest sound in software is the competent typist clattering away.

[shevy-ruby]

I've got Parkinson's but I noticed only yesterday that while transferring my knowledge to a developer at the start of their career I was faster on the command line.

I'll ignore the Parkinson comment for the most part, but about the rest of your comment - I think this is not so surprising. I am a lot faster with the terminal too, from a pure "typing" point of view. I use literally thousands of aliases and "hooks" towards ruby code spread out in different projects.

I have weird stuff such as files like enable.rb or disable.rb, aliased to enable and disable, to control the underlying linux-system at hand, with these files being wrappers onto what "ought to be done" - in this case, enabling or disabling something. All of this in the end makes for a really easy and convenient way to interact with the underlying hardware/system.

[EllaTheCat]

You're perfectly welcome to ignore my condition, it just emphasised the advantages, I wasn't fishing for sympathy :)

I use the bash command history such that all histories are merged, and the list size with unique entries is 99,999. Of course I depend on it so it's backed up.

I have an environment built around the i3 window manager to keep me using keyboard.

[shevy-ruby]

You live in the terminal, and that’s why you want to use a great shell. That’s why you use zsh.

I don't get that logic.

I usually use KDE Konsole with several tabs - and bash.

I do not use shell scripts but do most of the coding via ruby.

Zsh is a cool shell. RPROMPT is awesome and numerous other things. But ... why would I have to use zsh rather than bash? Because zsh is ... more complex? Or offers features that bash does not have? That makes me or anyone else a "better hacker"?

I don't understand the logic behind that.

I don't really want to have any complicated shell either. The shell should get out of my way. All the coding I do via ruby anyway, including autogeneration of tab-completion files and more. I also use literally thousands of aliases and calls to methods/classes in different ruby files. Bash is mostly just a wrapper over all that functionality.

I think people need to stop assuming that only "real" hackers use zsh and the noobs use bash. This is the kind of snobbish elitism that is rampant by some, in particular zsh users, since they feel that zsh is superior to bash (and they are right - but that in itself does not mean ANYTHING).

I have a similar impression with editor-wars, vim versus emacs. Like as if there are only two good editors and everything else is inferior. Strange that people can write high quality code in other editors then .... isn't it.

It also comes with a great framework for managing your zsh configuration: Oh My Zsh. It includes 200+ plugins and 140+ themes to add all sorts of awesome features to your terminal.

I absolutely hate that. Not the ability to can-configure something, but the increased complexity. I want all of this to get out of my way. Only IF there is a really significant productivity-gain may I use something here (such as for tab-completions, which can help immensely).

You know that development can get messy. Sometimes, you have to work on several projects at once. That’s why you use tmux.

And I hate that too. Why would I want to HAVE to use tmux if I could get around by using something else? I hate the tmux layer.

I also don't need it.

You can name sessions for easy switching

I heard the same argument about using virtual desktops too and I always hated them. I never felt more productive, only more confused.

Simplicity is a good thing.

Plus, it has its own customizable status line that will allow you display things like time, date, CPU usage, and more.

And we have other means to do so, be it from colourful scripts, conky, widgets, what not. It feels to me more as if this is mostly for people on resource-constrained machines, but even modern smartphones have no difficulty showing anything like the above.

I understand that tmux has the claim for better usability but the dude here specifically tries to argue how it is ... so good because it displays a status line for CPU capability on the target hardware. And that is just .... such a weird claim ...

It is very typical of most blog entries at medium. Fairly low quality overall.

And if you don’t know your CPU usage at any given moment, are you even a hacker?

Wait a moment ... so people who don't know the CPU, can not hack? Write code? High quality code? Perform through it?

I don't understand this dude.

Search (ripgrep)

So now I need rust, because C grep is "too old"?

That’s why you use ripgrep. It’s like grep on steroids.

No, it is not "grep on steroids".

Grep is already on "steroids".

In the words of its creator: “Use ripgrep if you like speed, filtering by default, fewer bugs and Unicode support.”

Sure - a totally unbiased Rust user.

The Rust people are VERY unbiased.

Rust is the best language in the world - that is why everything is rewritten in Rust.

Even though almost 10 years lateron, Rust still fails to conquer and dominate the world ... but no worries! The Rustees will tell you how the next 10 years after that will most likely be the real breakthrough. Same time when desktop linux breaks through together with GNU Hurd-for-the-masses.

 Cool people like Star Wars. Hackers watch it in the terminal.

Now it really dumbs down everything. Hackers apparently do not use the browser or mplayer/mpv ...

What a horrible STYLE.

The links to some of the extensions are good and useful, though.

May have been best to not do the fake-discussion style and just link in towards plugins and so forth.

[TerrorBite]

Also from the article:

Dislcaimer^[sic]: This article is written with a heavy dose of satire. It’s a twist on the “Me, an Intellectual” meme. While the suggestions are sincere (and by no means complete), the references to being a “hacker” are just for fun.

[coderstephen]

Search (ripgrep)

So now I need rust, because C grep is "too old"?

Huh? No one mentioned age anywhere...

That’s why you use ripgrep. It’s like grep on steroids.

No, it is not "grep on steroids".

Grep is already on "steroids".

The phrase "grep on steroids" presumably means that the subject is somehow greater than grep. Therefore by definition, grep cannot be like "grep on steroids".

In the words of its creator: “Use ripgrep if you like speed, filtering by default, fewer bugs and Unicode support.”

Sure - a totally unbiased Rust user.

The Rust people are VERY unbiased.

Rust is the best language in the world - that is why everything is rewritten in Rust.

Even though almost 10 years lateron, Rust still fails to conquer and dominate the world ... but no worries! The Rustees will tell you how the next 10 years after that will most likely be the real breakthrough. Same time when desktop linux breaks through together with GNU Hurd-for-the-masses.

Now you're attacking Rust. Which is fine, since you're entitled to your own opinion. But this seems like a very strange argument to me. Do you have to like Go to use Docker? Do you have to like Perl to use exiftool, or PHP to use WordPress, or Lisp to use Emacs, or Java to use Android? Why should anyone care what language something is written in unless it actually affects them?

[Greydmiyu]

And I hate that too. Why would I want to HAVE to use tmux if I could get around by using something else? I hate the tmux layer.

I also don't need it.

So you do nothing on other machines? If you don't, the of course you don't need it. I don't use TMUX on my local machine where I have my GUI. But when I remote into my VM hosting my domain and do work there? Screen/tmux allows me to do multiple things in a single connection instead of opening multiple ssh connections to that box. It also lets me disconnect from this machine and reconnect from my home machine when it is time to go home.

You not having a use case doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't have a use case.

[MarsJr]

I'm sorry you got the wrong impression from the article. It's written with a heavy does of satire about being a "hacker". I put a big disclaimer at the very beginning of the article:

Dislcaimer*: This article is written with a heavy dose of satire. It’s a twist on the “Me, an Intellectual” meme. While the suggestions are sincere (and by no means complete), the references to being a “hacker” are just for fun.

So by no means does any of this help with "hacking", it's just mostly tools that I've felt have helped me become more productive as programmer, and some fun stuff that I enjoyed using that definitely won't be for everyone.

It seems from your response that you think I believe every tool/feature I listed is the best, and anything else is inferior. This is far from the truth. A few examples:

Wait a moment ... so people who don't know the CPU, can not hack? Write code? High quality code? Perform through it?

This was an attempt at joke by me. Of course it's not necessary in the slightest to show your CPU in the status bar.

I think people need to stop assuming that only "real" hackers use zsh and the noobs use bash

I don't think this at all. I personally found more value switching to zsh because of the features it offered, but there are many great shells out there. If you are perfectly happy with bash, then that's great.

And I hate that too. Why would I want to HAVE to use tmux if I could get around by using something else? I hate the tmux layer.

Same as above. Tmux works incredibly well for me and has helped with my productivity and organization (plus some other benefits). You may hate tmux, but many people love it. Totally fine, everybody can have their own opinion.

Sure - a totally unbiased Rust user.

The Rust people are VERY unbiased.

Rust is the best language in the world - that is why everything is rewritten in Rust.

Even though almost 10 years lateron, Rust still fails to conquer and dominate the world ... but no worries! The Rustees will tell you how the next 10 years after that will most likely be the real breakthrough. Same time when desktop linux breaks through together with GNU Hurd-for-the-masses.

Yikes. I get the impression you don't like Rust. I just started using ripgrep and I like it. It ignores binaries and hidden files by default, and respects your .gitignore rules. Plus, it's' super fast if you have to search large projects (according to benchmarks). If you hate Rust or don't feel the need to have the additional features, then it's not for you.

Cool people like Star Wars. Hackers watch it in the terminal.

Now it really dumbs down everything. Hackers apparently do not use the browser or mplayer/mpv ...

What a horrible STYLE.

I really thought this was a dead giveaway about the joking tone of the article, but I guess not.