> > [Terminal m]ultiplexers add unnecessary overhead, suffer from a complexity cascade, because they actually have to translate escape codes, modifying them in hackish ways to get them to work with their concepts of windows/sessions. […]

So... like how a terminal emulator translates escape codes, modifying them in hackish ways to get them to work with X's/Wayland's/users' concepts of windows/sessions? :)

Obviously that's not an apples to apples comparison but really, while that may make it more complex and slightly buggier I don't see how that makes it bad.

> I find myself typing out “tmux” as the first command I run. Because it’s always going to be there, and it does the one thing I actually need it to no matter what: Let me run multiple shells at once, without SSHing in multiple times

I don't understand why people hate opening up another SSH session. If you're really worried about the 10 seconds it might take, you can easily configure it to take more like 1:

       -M      Places  the  ssh client into “master” mode for connection shar‐
               ing.  Multiple -M options places ssh  into  “master”  mode  but
               with confirmation required using ssh-askpass(1) before each op‐
               eration that changes the multiplexing state (e.g. opening a new
               session).    Refer  to  the  description  of  ControlMaster  in
               ssh_config(5) for details.

The only reason I ever use screen is for persistence, the multi-windows is just a secondary feature.

(Since when is tmux "always going to be there"?)