been thinking about even though “the terminal” is technically not a single thing (it’s your shell, terminal emulator, OS, and programs) there are a ton of UI conventions that make the terminal feel like a unified environment, like
* full screen programs like top often use “q” to quit
* programs often turn off colour when writing to a pipe/file
* if a program is displaying a lot of text, it’ll often open “less” to let you scroll
a lot of these feel more like social conventions to me
Julia Evans /
npub1ym…nlm9y
2024-11-03 13:17:15
Author Public Key
npub1ym9ddu2qh7rda8pxklq4gxw2kxhtm4cgvdvdy64z6agwy88nhuhqcnlm9yPublished at
2024-11-03 13:17:15Event JSON
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"content": "been thinking about even though “the terminal” is technically not a single thing (it’s your shell, terminal emulator, OS, and programs) there are a ton of UI conventions that make the terminal feel like a unified environment, like \n\n* full screen programs like top often use “q” to quit \n* programs often turn off colour when writing to a pipe/file\n* if a program is displaying a lot of text, it’ll often open “less” to let you scroll\n\na lot of these feel more like social conventions to me",
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