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Comment by imcritic | Hacker News Reader

I don't really see any value in such combines.

You want some calculation? Run calc and do the calculation, do you save so much time by replacing the "run calc" step with "open launcher" that it's worth adding more software to your setup?

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Have you ever tried a launcher as powerful as Raycast? I can only recommend it. I use it for quick calculations, currency conversions, file lookups, translations, looking up http status codes, joining meetings, finding emojis, quickly checking my calendar, etc. etc. – so, perhaps a singular function might not warrant a launcher, but the sum of functions and keyboard-centric UI make it very valuable for me in my daily workflows.

On a Mac, opening the launcher means pressing cmd-space at any time, getting a popup text entry field, typing "1+2", seeing the answer, and hitting esc to dismiss it. That's the entire workflow for operating a calculator, launching an app, searching Google, locating a file, or whatever. I challenge you to do that operation with a separate app more (or even as) efficiently.

There are good tools for doing each of those things separately. A good launcher that allows you to do any of them with such trivial overhead is a huge time saver.

The way I do it is, I type python in a new terminal, the terminal emulator is running at all times.

So, its ctrl-s + c, python, enter, 1 + 2, enter.

Slightly more work but meh.

Sure, but what does Python return if you type in "$100 in EUR" or "10 pounds in kg"?

That's what your browser is for.

My main problem with that kind of launcher is that if I write "gimp" on my launcher there is only one correct answer, launching gimp. Everything else is just noise.

The choice to offer all that other functionality detracts from the main one.

Launchers compete on their smartness. One that didn’t show Gimp as the top result wouldn’t have users very long. You can also turn off the results you don’t like.

The reason I don't use this kind of thing, is the time spent parsing the results.

If I write teams, I want to get a single result that will be the teams app on my computer.

I don't want to get a wikipedia entry about teams, a random text document that has "teams" in it, news about microsoft teams, or the price of the latest shitcoin named TEAMS.

All that does is add cognitive load, regardless of whether the app is the first result, seeing and parsing the other results, takes focus away from the work at hand and contributes to fatigue.

I have a browser with an omnibox for the internet, search on my file explorer, and find and ag[1] in my terminal.

Specialized tools for specific jobs.

[1]. ag is like grep but faster also it's 30% shorter to type than ack the other faster grep alternative.

Do you remember the command line command to convert 5:30 IST to PDT? Or convert $70 USD to SGD? Or what 17.3 years in seconds is? Or how many days are between 2024-12-30 and 2025-06-17?

Raycast can all of do that automatically, and the only shortcut you need to know is Cmd-Space.

I just type the same into the browser. Only shortcut is alt-tab or a touchscreen swipe, and it works on any device without installing anything.

I don't get it either.

If you ignore inefficiencies you won't get why the alternative is efficient.

Of course it's not the only shortcut. First, you might need to press tab several times and also pay attention to pick the right element from the app list (no need to do that with a launcher h

Then you need to open a new tab not to lose your current one (guess, this one can be avoided with extra config)

Then you need to wait for the network and hope your query is interpreted correctly by a very general search engine which are increasingly likely to push hallucinations as answers instead (for a calculator plugin you can learn syntax to have guaranteed match)

Not convinced. I challenge you to a duel wtf lmao roflcopter??

Are we fr splitting hairs now on milliseconds? Yes, and words per minute are a measure of productivity!

You'll never be convinced because you continue to distort reality to match your fantasy. Why did you convert seconds into milliseconds? Why did you ignore the non-time-based inefficiency of the workflow?

For search you then have at least 3 roundtrips back and forth to the server, plus processing at either end, which for me is at least 400ms for Google, though ping being 17ms suggests the time is mainly spent on processing at the other end.

I use Alfred which is similar. I can do a lot of things with just the launcher. From small things like typing uuid and getting a uuid to open a dev project and launching all the tools needed for it by just typing p [name] where name is autocompleted. Could I open the terminal and do it there instead? Sure. But that is slower than just getting an instant launcher

Plenty of people appear to disagree.

> do you save so much time by replacing the "run calc" step with "open launcher"

Yes, of course. The "open launcher" is 1 key press, an action you repeat many times a day. And it has 0 delay.

Your "run calc" can't beat this fluid UX

"write programs that do one thing and do it well. write programs to work together."

it's sad to see this core principle being increasingly ignored in linux, but i guess that ship sailed a while ago.

A runner that runs "programs" coming from extensions is about as close to this principle as possible, no?

I think so. It’s basically an ephemeral, extensible GUI shell.

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