I really love watching this thing evolve. A really nice console / terminal was the missing link that kept WSL from being a first class Linux development environment, and Windows Terminal is filling that gap REALLY fast.
I have a funny feeling that there are going to be a LOT of developers who live outside the rarefied bubble of desktop UNIX users whose work-a-day quality of life is going to be markedly improved by this.
I have a funny feeling that there are going to be a LOT of developers who live outside the rarefied bubble of desktop UNIX users whose work-a-day quality of life is going to be markedly improved by this.
I work (as a network server developer) in the game industry and this is absolutely transformative for my work. I have to use Windows. A lot of the tooling in the game industry only runs on Windows. I will likely start doing the entirety of my work inside of this terminal. Right now I’m running an XFCE desktop inside of a VirtualBox VM just so that I can run Konsole because the terminal emulators on Windows are all in some way insufficient.
While I agree that “rarefied bubble” seems hyperbolic, “not even sure I know a dev who uses Windows” seems much more hyperbolic to me.
Vast armies of “enterprise” developers run Windows all the time. And many who do product work are Windows first.
To counter your anecdata with some of my own, on a project I worked last year, we were delivering software that ran exclusively on RHEL servers. On days when the whole team met, you’d see a dozen Windows laptops, two or three Macs and two of us running Linux. One of the Linux holdouts was a Red Hat employee, and I was the other, having switched when my 2011 17” MBP died of GPU failure and I couldn’t find anything in Apple’s lineup to replace it.
Outside that group, I know plenty who run Macs, but the vast majority I’ve worked with use Windows as a daily driver.
That said, every single Windows user I know who suffered from the trash fire that is the old terminal has already helped themselves in terms of quality of life by installing cmder or something like it. “Markedly improved” is probably overstatement for most, even though it will be much better than the default from before.
macOS is really popular in USA. But it’s not really the case for Europe. We struggled to find a macOS developer that is able to do system programming so much that we had to hire Linux devs and trained them with knowledge about macOS.
Seriously, just type “I run Windows” into the Lobsters search box and take a gander at the number of articles this yields.
Not just Mac users, but even developers who’ve been on Windows for any number of reasons (It’s what their IT department supports, for example).
Sorry about the hyperbole, it’s a core part of my personality and when I’m excited about something it’s very hard to hide, but I shall endeavor to do so in future interactions here.
I think your post is actually a really usefu could l window into how many developers think about this situation.
We all surround ourselves with communities of like minded people, and as a result it’s very easy to start thinking thata this represents the status quo for all developers, everywhere.
Somebody felt so strongly about my comment that they flagged it as spam!
I would love it if the greater technology community could take a giant step back and recognize that the bubbles we inhabit can narrow our perception of reality.
I think for myself I will stop interacting with Windows related posts on lobsters. I will totally cop to having been over-zealous in my interactions on the previous thread, but I was exceedingly careful in my response this time and yet still got flagged.
I agree that we all have bubbles. Sometimes it’s hard to escape your bubble even if you want to because it has to do with geography or industry. But I do agree that we should do our best to at least be aware that those bubbles exist. Honestly, my original comment was meant to be light-hearted, trading hyperbole for hyperbole. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good topic for that kind of thing.
Jokes (and lighthearted comments) often don’t land in text. Can’t add intonation beyond SCREAMING something really. Sometimes just you just have to call it out rather dryly ..
I’m on windows at work. I think hwayne is too. Don’t forget that there is an entire dev community built around the C# and the CLR which until recently was largely focused around windows. Not too mention lots of game devs work in windows.
The backend that enables this is pretty cool - the pseudoconsole apis. I wrote a custom terminal emulator for myself and recently put it through that api… and old Windows programs just work on it! It really is pretty cool, now we not only have what Microsoft does, but what we do for ourselves too, now without weird screen scraping hacks.
I’ll have to download this though to confirm my client terminal program api all still works in it though..
The shift click to expand selection looks nice.
I really love watching this thing evolve. A really nice console / terminal was the missing link that kept WSL from being a first class Linux development environment, and Windows Terminal is filling that gap REALLY fast.
I have a funny feeling that there are going to be a LOT of developers who live outside the rarefied bubble of desktop UNIX users whose work-a-day quality of life is going to be markedly improved by this.
I work (as a network server developer) in the game industry and this is absolutely transformative for my work. I have to use Windows. A lot of the tooling in the game industry only runs on Windows. I will likely start doing the entirety of my work inside of this terminal. Right now I’m running an XFCE desktop inside of a VirtualBox VM just so that I can run Konsole because the terminal emulators on Windows are all in some way insufficient.
You mean, like, Mac users? I’m not even sure I know a dev who uses Windows. Not saying they don’t exist, just questioning the hyperbole here :-)
While I agree that “rarefied bubble” seems hyperbolic, “not even sure I know a dev who uses Windows” seems much more hyperbolic to me.
Vast armies of “enterprise” developers run Windows all the time. And many who do product work are Windows first.
To counter your anecdata with some of my own, on a project I worked last year, we were delivering software that ran exclusively on RHEL servers. On days when the whole team met, you’d see a dozen Windows laptops, two or three Macs and two of us running Linux. One of the Linux holdouts was a Red Hat employee, and I was the other, having switched when my 2011 17” MBP died of GPU failure and I couldn’t find anything in Apple’s lineup to replace it.
Outside that group, I know plenty who run Macs, but the vast majority I’ve worked with use Windows as a daily driver.
That said, every single Windows user I know who suffered from the trash fire that is the old terminal has already helped themselves in terms of quality of life by installing cmder or something like it. “Markedly improved” is probably overstatement for most, even though it will be much better than the default from before.
Hello! Nice to meet you! I am a software engineer and I use Windows.
I like coffee and tiling as many windows as Windows lets me. Now you know a dev who uses Windows!
macOS is really popular in USA. But it’s not really the case for Europe. We struggled to find a macOS developer that is able to do system programming so much that we had to hire Linux devs and trained them with knowledge about macOS.
Windows devs are many (I am one also). Just as any popular platform, I imagine developing is popular there too.
You should get out more ;)
Seriously, just type “I run Windows” into the Lobsters search box and take a gander at the number of articles this yields.
Not just Mac users, but even developers who’ve been on Windows for any number of reasons (It’s what their IT department supports, for example).
Sorry about the hyperbole, it’s a core part of my personality and when I’m excited about something it’s very hard to hide, but I shall endeavor to do so in future interactions here.
Hehe, I definitely deserved what I got here, I managed to use hyperbole in a comment calling out hyperbole! :-)
I think your post is actually a really usefu could l window into how many developers think about this situation.
We all surround ourselves with communities of like minded people, and as a result it’s very easy to start thinking thata this represents the status quo for all developers, everywhere.
Somebody felt so strongly about my comment that they flagged it as spam!
I would love it if the greater technology community could take a giant step back and recognize that the bubbles we inhabit can narrow our perception of reality.
I think for myself I will stop interacting with Windows related posts on lobsters. I will totally cop to having been over-zealous in my interactions on the previous thread, but I was exceedingly careful in my response this time and yet still got flagged.
I agree that we all have bubbles. Sometimes it’s hard to escape your bubble even if you want to because it has to do with geography or industry. But I do agree that we should do our best to at least be aware that those bubbles exist. Honestly, my original comment was meant to be light-hearted, trading hyperbole for hyperbole. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good topic for that kind of thing.
Jokes (and lighthearted comments) often don’t land in text. Can’t add intonation beyond SCREAMING something really. Sometimes just you just have to call it out rather dryly ..
I hear you.. I agree with you. I think it would be bad if you refrained from interacting with Windows posts.
I’m on windows at work. I think hwayne is too. Don’t forget that there is an entire dev community built around the C# and the CLR which until recently was largely focused around windows. Not too mention lots of game devs work in windows.
The backend that enables this is pretty cool - the pseudoconsole apis. I wrote a custom terminal emulator for myself and recently put it through that api… and old Windows programs just work on it! It really is pretty cool, now we not only have what Microsoft does, but what we do for ourselves too, now without weird screen scraping hacks.
I’ll have to download this though to confirm my client terminal program api all still works in it though..
Can you use this with cmd.exe and bash as well? Or is it powershell only?
Works with all three.
Yes all three in a really nice package. In fact you can default to the Linux shell on loading Terminal.