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Comment by MobiusHorizons | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but how concretely does that hold you back? Not saying I can’t imagine any possibilities, but guis aren’t universally better for editing text. In fact I usually find the gui is what is holding me back, since I end up needing access over ssh/mosh or easier access to a terminal, and tools such as tmux provide much better (imo) ergonomics than I get with terminal-in-ide especially with the ability to zoom one split to fullscreen.

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It's not the GUI per se that people want, but it's the useful default configuration.

If I'm working on a project I want to see the file tree, I want multiple editor tabs for different files, I want to be able to full text search the project I have open, I want a terminal window to execute commands on, and most importantly I want to be able to switch between these elements without needing to learn a new set of opaque keyboard commands.

VSCode/Codium gives you this out of the box with zero friction so it's no wonder that it's consuming market share like nobody's business.

I wish it wasn't electron and I wish it wasn't Microsoft, but until there's a better alternative that's what I'm using most of the time.

I honestly don't remember the last time I used a terminal to edit files. I don't really miss vim that much since I still use vim shortcuts in VSCode. I briefly tried Emacs but a lot of the major modes for languages I used were too buggy and those were distracting me too much for it to be my daily driver (maybe I have ADHD, dunno)

For what its worth, VSCode also works over SSH. There's a collection of plugins for working remotely or in containers.

The main thing that drew me to VSCode originally was pretty good support for fonts and ligatures. And I think I also like some of the QoL plugins I use. The config is just JSON, and it's pretty easily tweakable to how I like it.

I've heard good things about nvim and zed though, and I'm tempted to try them. But there's a bunch of idiosyncrasies and quirks that you get used to, so switched kinda feels like a chore

Fair enough! Definitely not trying to make anyone change their editor of choice. But I do feel people forget (or maybe never knew) how productive terminal based workflows for editing / compiling / running tests can be once they get used to how their specific IDE exposes those features. I personally can’t think of anything I couldn’t add to terminal workflow except for things like markdown preview or image preview. There are certainly inconveniences like difficulties with copy/paste or mouse based split selection/ scrolling etc that can be worked around in more or less complete and or painful ways. But for the general tasks IDEs are used for i am not aware of anything else a gui really helps with. Hence my question.

>but guis aren’t universally better for editing text.

Many of us use the code editor for a lot more than strictly editing text.

Like what? That after all was my original question.

I'm a die-hard nvim/tmux/mosh user so take this with a grain of salt, but to answer your question, many people use their IDEs as project dashboards. For example (depending on the project/ecosystem):

1. GUI editor (for UI)

2. Debugging (as in standard debugging tools like breakpoints, REPLs, etc)

3. Building the project, and build management

4. A terminal emulator

5. A container orchestrator manager (or as I like to call it, an orchestrator orchestrator)

Personally I think those tools are better separted from the IDE, but there is a real convenience in having them integrated.

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