Getting terminal-pilled

It took me 36 years but I finally saw the light: I consider myself a terminal user now! I can vividly remember when my math professor at university navigated to his latex/pdf slides via the command line on his linux laptop and me thinking:

What a smug asshole! Why can't he just use the computer like everyone else?!

Man, how stupid I was back then. You see, I always loved computers and tinkering but apart from a short period of trying out SuSE Linux when I was ~15 years old, I was firmly stuck on Windows for most of my life and grew up using GUI applications (not taking into account the limited exposure I had to MS/DOS as a very young child). As a young and naive boy I therefore thought that my way of using this technology must certainly be the optimal way of doing things. As with many things in life, I was of course completely wrong.

First of all: There is no one optimal way of using technology, only the optimal way for you to use something. Of course there are objective ways of measuring how efficiently someone is leveraging a technology like the time it takes them to finish a specific task. But this is a very one dimensional way of seeing things. Maybe more importantly, you need to be comfortable with the way you are doing something. And this is where time/age and especially self-reflection can make all the difference in the world.

Looking back

Like I mentioned before, I did have at least some exposure to Linux in the early 2000's when I tried out SuSE Linux alongside my usual Windows XP System. This made it impossible to completely avoid the command line, since some aspects like installing the drivers for my ATI GPU (you know, the company that AMD later aquired to boost their GPU game) required me to type in cryptic commands into this arcane feeling interface commonly referred to as the terminal. I must have felt like Neo in the Matrix back then with the slight difference that I didn't actually know what I was doing. Although I did enjoy the experience of tinkering with Linux, I eventually just regressed to using Windows full time and didn't touch Linux for many years. I do remember some German forum post from back then where people would regularly answer troubleshooting questions regarding Linux with: "Read the Koffler" (referring to the German Linux Bible). I guess Germans were born to be Stack Overflow users.

Seeing the light

I did eventually start using Linux again for my ubuntu home server and got comfortable with the occasional use of ssh via putty on Windows but the moment that changed everything for me was the release of ChatGPT of all things. I am a pretty technical person, having studied mechanical engineering and working at a research institute focusing on systems engineering. But I never was a programmer. At various stages of my life, I had thought about getting into programming, but never went through with it. While finishing my master's I did enroll into the free online version of CS50 but never finished it, either.

November 30th, 2022 was finally the moment where I had no more excuses. I now had access to this magical assistant with a somewhat lopsided level of intelligence that could answer my questions 24/7 (or at least: be willing to always give me an answer). More importantly, this tool could spit out code. Code that even worked, albeit with the caveat of you sometimes having to go back and forth to make the code actually work. For me, this meant that I could finally start coding away without having to first go through many different tutorials before I could build something of actual use.

I know that this is a slippery slope and it can give you the illusion of learning something while in reality, the AI is doing all of the heavy lifting that would actually result in your brain forming the new connections required to learn something. But this wasn't the case for me. I was hooked on learning all about building software all of a sudden. Instead of having to sift through mountains of tutorials until finding something that resonated with me, however, I could just learn by doing. The many years of tinkering with computers certainly gave me a substantial advantage because even though I was never a programmer, I did at least have a pretty good understanding of how computers work. Which meant that I knew what to ask for!

Ok, but what does this have to do with working from a terminal, you might be asking yourself. And you are right, programming does not mean that you have to do everything from the terminal. Heck, most people working as software developers are probably using GUIs for most of their work, since VSCode not only gives you a play button for running your code, it also hides working with git behind an easy to use visual interface.

But I guess I am not like most people, some would even call me a freak. But dipping my toes into programming lead me down a rabbit hole full of magical tools and people that I didn't know exist. I started reading blog posts and watching a lot of videos about programming on YouTube. I discovered the Primeagen and was mesmerized by his ability to magically jump around the terminal. And I got terminal-pilled. I now use vim, btw! I use the terminal for almost everything now, except browsing the web but I did install vimium to at least navigate my browser like I would navigate my terminal. Windows is but a distant memory for me, although I am still occasionally required to use it. For my desktop computer, I started using endeavor/arch with hyprland and switched to a Macbook for mobile use. I never open the app store though, homebrew is all you need. And I am not alone, apparently. Even PewDiePie has switched to Linux! And with this website, I want to share my journey and all the amazing tools I have discovered along the way. Open and free tools that is. Because I have discovered something else: Open Source sparks joy in me!

Looking ahead

We are currently experiencing the fastest technological progress I have every witnessed in my lifetime with the advent of advanced AI systems that are suddenly able to work with natural language. I am a heavy AI/LLM user and I see the vast potential that the integration of these systems into every aspect of our daily lives could have. At the same time, I am very aware of the limitations of current LLM-based systems and try to strike a balance between jumping on the hype train and jumping into mount doom. One thing that has become clear, however, is that text-based interfaces are the ideal way for LLMs to interact with other systems. Watching Claude Code grep through your codebase, using cargo to compile the latest attempt at resolving the long list of errors that the rust compiler slapped into your face or creating and editing files has made it abundantly clear that AI agents where born to use the terminal.

And so was I, apparently. It just took me 36 years to realize it...

Oh, and just fyi: I might be AI maximizing like only very few people but I did write every single word of this post!