alt Hacker NewsSomehow this whole ecosystem of tools always gives me a bad vibe, and I can't quite pinpoint why.
All the demos and videos are applications with lots of stacked pop-ups/modal windows, and things moving around continuously. It all reminds me of what we typically see in computers in TV shows or sci-fi films.
It just looks like a chaotic mess of things, and I get this really strong urge to just stay away from it all.
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For me its the fact a large chunk of my terminal experience is over limited bandwidth connections to laggy servers with varying feature support. I appreciate the eye candy and what they have achieved but I don't need it, I just want TUIs to work everywhere with low latency.
Yeah, similar feelings here. I grew up in the BBS world in the 90s, and love a quality TUI experience, but something about this toolset just gives me the ick. I can't keep any of the naming straight; to me it all reads like "combine Chapstick with Cotton Swab inside of Matcha Latte" and my eyes instantly glaze over.
How does this company make money? Is it all just a ZIRP fever dream?
I agree with you about the general vibe being off putting. I’ve been using their libraries for a while now and have to say they are pretty solid though. The terminal components work reliably, and have less UX bugs than the alternatives.
It reminds me of "web3" marketing. My hackles are immediately raised.
Bubbletea is actually pretty cool. I also agree that the website doesn't look so good.
It all reminds me of what we typically see in computers in TV shows or sci-fi films.
The general vibe I get is "script kiddies trying too hard".
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It has a “gen-AI” vibe to it, and it’s meant to be playful in an alt/psypop sort of way but it is from no culture in particular. It trips up my brain as a bubbly ad from the marketing department of a dystopian corporation.
+1.
Maybe it's just pattern recognition misfiring, maybe I'm too just used to workhorse software with websites that look stuck in 1999, but everything coming out of that company (Charmbracelet, Inc. according to website footer) feels like it could suddenly get monetized and enshittified next Tuesday morning.
There is also something weird about this entire aesthetics. They all got this 2020s startup vibe of smooth gradients, bisexual lighting, infantile mascots with cartoon or anime inspired styles, vaguely Asian and vaguely feminine. It feels predatory not in the Big Cat with Bloody Mouth way, but in the Cocomelon sensory videos for ages 1 to 3 way. Am I crazy or does anyone else feel similarly?