Honestly, this is a pretty badly written and researched article for someone that likes writing so much.

Like, just the opening two paragraphs about Microsoft controlling document formats … They repeat the same information in both paragraphs and give a rather incomplete history of document formatting.

It’s also wild to write that many words about Markdown and never discuss its connection to HTML and its foundation in formatting via declarative intent rather than imperative formatting instructions (i.e. in markdown you dont style your title by saying bold / underling / font-size:20, you declare your true intent which is this is the top level title / heading, but that all comes from the underlying structure of HTML which markdown is basically just a simplification of.

It needs a decent UX, but most importantly it needs binary compatibility. No pleb will compile from source.

This is literally lemmy, a (relatively) niche platform where somebody is asking about a (relatively) niche subject. I dont think anything about this is a average person.

‘Average person’ was in quotes because it’s the language you used to describe someone not comfortable with the command line.

I mean what’s the point of “self” hosting then?

If you have to be a professional server administrator to host one of these services, then why even have a self hosting community as opposed to just a hosting community for server admins to discuss how to set and configure various services? Is this community dedicated to just discussing the uniqueness of managing a home server without a dedicated IP?

Self hosting is just an extension of open source software. It’s only goal is being able to run your own backends of apps to not be exploited by major companies. It’s goal is not to be a niche technical hobby, if that’s your goal in its own right, then get a model train or a Warhammer set.

Mainstream consumers don’t know words “Plex” and “Home Assistant” either.

Yes, they do lol. It’s flat out weird to think that the only people who have ever heard of pirating are software developers and server admins who use the command line.

You’re viewing this through an incredibly skewed lense. The average person will never even consider self hosting nor will care, if anything the average person prefers cloud services.

The only lens I’m viewing this through is one that dares to imagine that the Venn diagram of “computer users savvy enough to care about privacy” isn’t 100% contained within the circle of “computer users savvy with the terminal”.

Quite frankly your stance that the ‘average person’ doesn’t care, when this post is LITERALLY from an ‘average person’ who does, is the one that seems off base on its face.

Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.

You know what self hosted projects have been successes? Plex and Home Assistant. You know what projects don’t require the terminal? Plex and Home Assistant.

Self hosting is doomed until this isn’t the answer.

You could but you’d be drawing a false equivalency.

Fair point, I misspoke / don’t actually think that it’s wild, I was being dramatic.

Have you tried using VSCode / VSCodium? I’ve tried using a VIM based workflow and found myself missing many graphical dev features in VSCode.

And sure, there’s nothing wild about continuing to use a process that works for you, but it is a little wild to insist that your process is the best and other people should learn it, if you also know that it has inherent limitations that alternatives don’t.

Fair enough!

K, now give me the longest edge and it’s displacement relative to the x axis. Then rotate the shape until that edge is roughly 33 degrees off the z axis.

Oh wow, look, suddenly it may be helpful to have a way other than text to draw and visualize things.

My worldview is that it’s wild to choose a dev tool chain incapable of drawing basic 2d shapes, when you have ones available that can do anything.

But it’s literally doing that in your image. When a horizontal and vertical line cross the horizontal line breaks.

Yes, as an intentional graphical choice to illustrate the crossing of two paths.

In lazyvim a vertical line, with no crossings, is still broken, as it is two pipes separated by the line space height.

Oh, did you mean the points that represent actual commits? You’re arguing it’s trash because there’s no line between two adjacent commits? Really?

No, I’m saying it’s trash because it CANNOT do something basic like drawing a continuous vertical line, because it is hamstrung by using the interface of a typewriter. A git branch is just one readily available example of a situation where something extremely basic like drawing a continuous line would make sense.

You’ve brought it up multiple times now so I think it’s time you also source that claim. Cmon, source the claim where the code editor with better visual fidelity increases productivity.

I can’t cite internal market research that is under NDA. I can point you to basic courses on design and UX, point you to information on concepts like cognitive overload, and point out to you the multiple trillion dollar software companies that got to where they are entirely through paying attention to little UX details that backend nerds previously claimed didn’t matter and were user skill issues.

Yes, terminal can’t do everything, but I don’t think anyone is using VS code to look at a cube either. Actually, I’m not even sure if there is a VS code extension that draws cubes? So you wouldn’t use VS code for that either.

Bruh, why would you even try and talk out of your ass like this? I am literally using jsCad and VsCode to do my personal 3d printing modelling, and I literally got my start programming using first VS, then VSCode, to build 3d modelling software for Autodesk. Not sure if you’re aware of this but modern websites have this little thing called WebGL that lets them display these little things called jraphics.

Again, VsCode can do everything VIM can do, but not vice versa.

and if I do not want the GUI part, how come it surprises you that I do not use that superset?

Go ahead and represent an arbitrary 3d shape using the command line, suddenly you may realize that a typewriter’s interface isn’t the fastest for accomplishing every programming task.

Regardless, you can be happy with a limited subset of functionality and trying to cram every interaction into text, that’s not an argument that that way is better or that a new dev should go that route, just that you can get by using that method.

I said continuous vertical lines and literally posted a screenshot of it not being able to do it.

It’s functionally the same visual representation of data so you’re literally arguing over it not looking like you want it to look.

No, it’s not. The human brain does not process dashed lines as easily as it does continuous lines. A whole bunch of dashed lines are objectively harder to follow than continuous ones.

You can think that’s not important, but the literal decades of UX research and attention to fine grained user interaction, can prove that you’re just flat out wrong.

You look at the above and think they’re the same, but they’re fundamentally not. Literally just go ahead and try and visualize a basuc cube with this base point and dimensions through a CLI and watch that wow, maybe a fucking typewriter interface isn’t the best for absolutely everything:

Cube([0.37, -300, 45], [37,-98,-100])

No, the conclusion I’ve been saying is that CLI developers are smart people who have spent a long time memorizing commands to get fast at things that can be done quickly and intuitively through basic 2d graphical interfaces.

They’re now either in a situation where the gains from learning the new process aren’t going to outweigh the costs (though still doesn’t mean anyone else should follow their path), or they would, but they’re just stuck in their ways because of sunk cost fallacy.

No, I’m not. I’m just pointing out how lazygit is still limited by being a line by line, text based, CLI interface, and thus cannot draw a continuous vertical line, even if drawing a continuous vertical line would make sense in that situation:

Ok, cool beans bro, try and write 3d modelling software with just a command line interface and you’ll quickly see how a typewriter’s format for displaying text isn’t the fastest for every programming task.