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320 points IroncladDev | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.649s | source
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rollcat ◴[] No.43670593[source]
I don't understand the obsession with 1980s terminals. They're even less powerful than the contemporary 8-bit home computers. It's perfectly OK to be a retro enthusiast, it's another thing to claim that this is the peak tech to power our modern CLIs, or a solid foundation for portable UIs.

From the docs:

    Stop thinking in standard CSS units like px, em, rem, %
    Start thinking in Character Cells for spacing, sizing, and positioning
A VT102 already has a character grid, but it needs a serial protocol to allow applications on the mainframe to talk to it. You can loop around this and use the raw mode to address individual cells.

The web browser has an insanely powerful typographic and layout engine. Now we're looping back into character cells. Something went wrong here, at least once.

That said, I like the aesthetic and the default color palette. It's quirky, but it has its places.

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1. safety1st ◴[] No.43678300[source]
My take is that the greatest unsolved UX challenge of our time is the way that every company has sought to acquire more of our attention and introduced limitless distractions as a result. The terminal is comparatively distraction free.

So the nostalgia for it is not a surprise, and the decision to spend more time in terminal-esque interfaces can be rational. Often some marketing department wants to splash fonts, layouts and colors everywhere; but I just want to read some text.