←back to thread

Starship: A minimal, fast, and customizable prompt for any shell

(starship.rs)
457 points benoitg | 2 comments | 24 Jun 25 11:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.58s | source
Show context
m000 ◴[24 Jun 25 16:10 UTC] No.44367731[source]▶
I would be very curious to see an age demographic chart of people using e.g. Starship.

Personally, over time, I have stopped caring too much about prompt customization. I concluded that, no matter how carefully you curate your prompt, 90% of the information shown will be irrelevant 90% of the time*. After a while, your brain will start perceiving this as visual clutter and filter it out, to the point you may even forget the information is there, right in front of your eyes.

And for the things that matter, you probably need more details than any prompt can show you. E.g. are there changes in your git branch? Ok there are, good to know, but which files have changed? Just knowing that there are changes is not really actionable information. You need to run additional commands to get actionable details.

* the numbers are completely arbitrary, but you get the picture

replies(12): >>44368415 #>>44368447 #>>44368864 #>>44369236 #>>44369278 #>>44370150 #>>44370843 #>>44371011 #>>44371393 #>>44373149 #>>44376069 #>>44385108 #
1. bityard ◴[24 Jun 25 17:11 UTC] No.44368415[source]▶
I think we can generalize this into the overall computing environment. When I was younger, I was that kid building my whole OS from source via Gentoo, with all the CPU-specific flags and optimizations. I had a very detailed window manager configuration (fwvm2 maybe?), a .bashrc full of aliases and functions for every occasion. And yes, a custom prompt.

I think these kinds of over-optimization rabbit holes are a good learning experience, but I compare it to woodworking. A woodworker just starting out will spend most of his/her time building or refining the tools they need, learning techniques, coming up with ideas/designs and testing them, etc. But eventually the point comes where you have to get Real Work done and the tools and jigs have to wait until the weekend.

Linux is still my favorite desktop OS, but these days I just run Debian and KDE because "free time" is not a thing I have anymore and I care more about getting things done than having the most optimal computing experience.

replies(1): >>44369070 #
2. skydhash ◴[24 Jun 25 18:15 UTC] No.44369070[source]▶
I still have free time, my shift to default config and stable software was caused by how many workfkow changes for no reason I could stomach. I rarely need the latest features. Getting things to work and expecting to stay working for a while is the basic premise of computing.