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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

So just because the code is remote one should edit in a terminal? Seems like the lowest common denominator, but a pretty bad one. And on Windows (the most common OS, even among developers) this is pretty painful even with WSL. As far as lowest common denominators for tooling goes, "terminal window" is pretty low.

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I think they were commenting on the portability of terminal-based applications and describing remote editing as a use case. You may think it's "bad" but it's also ubiquitous, resource-efficient, and free. Can you explain to this non-Windows user why vim+tmux is painful in Windows (with or without WSL) in a local or remote setting?

I think it's painful because terminals and ssh are just second class citizens. Dotfiles, ssh key storage etc are just not a first class concept (at least not in the same way as on linux) etc. And also things like clipboards don't work - which to a linux user might seem like a non-issue (It just never worked well) but that's a much more painful experience if you are used to it working.

Clipboards can be a hassle, for sure. Can you help me understand the impact of dotfiles / ssh key management not being a "first class concept?" How much of a time / productivity hit do you take? Thanks so much for helping me understand.

I mean the idea of config files is on one hand windows where some things work like a Linux user would expect (e.g a .gitconfig) while others obviously don’t, e.g use registry or other settings storage. Next, wsl is separate so you aren’t really sure which settings apply where. Are you using git from within wsl? Or a windows git? Is the credential manager the wsl one or one from windows? Unless one is ready to completely “jump into” wsl and ignore everything outside it has a chance of feeling coherent - but few windows users want that I’d guess.

I don’t work in windows but fwiw my clipboard and config files work flawlessly in mac and Linux. Last time I used WSL everything was working fine but it’s been a few years.

In vim in a terminal too?

Yeah I don’t recall any problems in WSL but like I said it’s been years.

Idk man it’s all preference. I’m way more comfortable in the terminal than in a gui editor. The flexibility I get from my shell, nvim and tmux is unmatched by any gui solution I’ve tried. If you don’t like the terminal that’s fine you can always just use git!

It’s lightweight, fast, and works on any machine. After years in VScode I got fed up with Microsoft lock in for things like syncing configs and remote editing extensions.

Your point about windows may be true, but I’ve yet to work somewhere that hasn’t let me use a MacBook.

Also I’m a pentester at work, so I don’t have to write production ready code…I can see why developers might want all the shiny features/integrations that come with a language-specific IDE.

To each their own!

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