State of the Terminal

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall sentiment on terminals in 2024

  • Many see terminals as more powerful and pleasant than ever, especially with modern emulators and editors (e.g., Neovim with prebuilt configs).
  • Others are baffled that 50-year-old constraints still dominate and wish for a “modern textual interface” unconstrained by teletype-era assumptions.

Windows Terminal and Windows CLI ecosystem

  • Microsoft’s terminal is praised as a high‑quality, cross‑platform baseline; people like that terminal rendering libraries now mostly “just work” on Windows.
  • Criticisms: TERM reuse as xterm causes compatibility ambiguity; performance issues when scrolling lots of output; PowerShell startup latency vs Unix shells; persistent pain around code pages and reliable UTF‑8 unless using WSL or alternative shells.

Keybinding, modifiers, and usability

  • Modifier handling (Ctrl/Alt, Ctrl+arrows) is seen as a major source of complexity; some terminals and toolkits are improving but it remains fragile.
  • Tension between “mouse-friendly, GUI-like editing” in the shell vs traditional keyboard-centric workflows; some want clicking and selection to behave like text editors, while others find such behavior disastrous inside tools like Vim.
  • Conflicts over Ctrl‑C/Ctrl‑V: many want familiar copy/paste; others emphasize the need for process control and existing conventions.

Calls for “next‑gen” terminals and structured CLIs

  • Several proposals: terminals that handle structured data instead of plain text streams; richer UI primitives (folding, widgets, tables, graphics); more discoverable, IDE-like completion and help.
  • Powershell and alternative shells (nushell, elvish, others) are cited as partial examples of structured pipelines.
  • Skeptics argue changing the byte‑stream model or ANSI escapes would require “boiling the ocean” and rewriting or abandoning decades of tools.

Backwards compatibility, standards, and terminfo

  • Heavy criticism of TERM proliferation, xterm-* dependence, and lack of strong standardization for escape sequences and capabilities.
  • Debate over terminfo vs runtime feature queries: some new TUI libraries avoid terminfo and probe terminals directly; others highlight terminfo portability problems across ncurses versions and OSes.
  • Some adopt alternative curses implementations (e.g., NetBSD curses) and custom terminfo bundles to sidestep system ncurses issues.

Graphics, TUIs, and richer output

  • Interest in sixels, inline images, and Tektronix‑style or overprinting capabilities to get more than two colors per cell and richer shapes.
  • Text folding and graphics proposals exist (including DomTerm), but integration with SSH/mosh/tmux and existing workflows is a major blocker.
  • Many TUIs rely on libraries (ncurses, charm.sh, etc.) that try to abstract away terminal quirks, but graceful degradation and consistent standards remain open problems.

CLI usability, learning curve, and culture

  • Some value the Lindy effect and stability: old skills (pipes, classic tools) stay useful for decades.
  • Others see poor UX, inconsistent flags, and cryptic man pages (tar, ip, etc.) as unnecessary friction, especially for newcomers.
  • Disagreement over whether Linux desktops should hide terminals for mainstream users or embrace them while improving ergonomics.