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Comment by timtimmy

10 hours ago

Even with IDEs that have a terminal view, I still much prefer using a separate terminal app.

Same. Standalone terminals will always beat those built into other things in terms of being good at being a terminal. No need to pile more bloat onto an already bloated IDE/editor, and besides it feels kind of like those old combo TV+VCR units where neither the CRT tube nor the VHS player were great.

If I'd do anything to Xcode or Android Studio, it'd be to split more things out of them and make them excellent at their core tasks.

Why? It seems pretty pointless to keep hot memory of the context of every app and tab you have open as to recall what process and tab and window ties to what thing you were doing at what time, when it's effectively all one related workflow inside your Integrated* Development Environment. Do you just keep a separate dedicated tab in your terminal for actions you would only do against a single directory?

  • I do the same - largely because I open the IDE with `idea .`/`zed .` (or whatever) from a directory with the correct nix dev shell already loaded in order to ensure the correct toolchains get used.

    Typically I have 3-4 different projects open at a time and probably 30-40 terminal windows across them and other places (in Ghostty).

    Honestly it had never really crossed my mind that people used the built-in terminal for anything!