logoalt Hacker News

WD-42yesterday at 4:30 PM5 repliesview on HN

Mitchell,

What has it been like witnessing terminal emulators make such a huge comeback with the advent of Claude Code et. all? I remember comments here in the early days of Ghostty along the lines of "Why is he working on a terminal emulator? We need people working on future problems, not the past!" Pretty funny considering I regularly hear people say they are in the terminal more than the browser now. Crazy times!


Replies

mitchellhyesterday at 5:27 PM

Overall I would describe it as "amusing."

If you told me 3 years ago that terminal usage would _increase_ I would've laughed. Beyond that, I'm now having regular conversations with the frontier agentic coding companies (since they're far and away the largest terminal users at the moment) and if you had told me 2 years ago that that would be happening because of a terminal, I would've laughed even harder.

So, it's amazing. But overall, its amusing.

show 1 reply
pkulakyesterday at 4:58 PM

Wait, really? So I’ve used the terminal for everything for decades, and now, because of vibe coding, all The Kids have joined me? I don’t even know how to feel about that. Better terminals are nice though.

show 3 replies
nine_kyesterday at 7:26 PM

/* Claude Code is the strongest case of the return to the mainframe: a closed, bespoke, paid service that nothing locally run compares to. Terminals are just a natural part of the mainframe world! */

txdvyesterday at 4:53 PM

Once he fixes the past he will have more time to fix the future

robinwhgyesterday at 4:59 PM

He was on a podcast recently where he talked about that a little. It’s on Youtube.