Julia Evans

programming and exclamation marks

I have DMs muted from people I don’t follow.

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b0rk@social-jvns-ca.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqszdjkk79qtlpk7nsnt0s25r89trt4a6uyxxkxjd23dw58zrnem7tspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43q7glcft

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Last Notes

2026-08-13 15:37:05 UTC

these SSH polls are reminding me that (though I'm not a security person) I'm a big believer that security systems should allow users to be inattentive and lazy and confused and to do the thing that seems the most convenient instead of the the thing that might be the most secure, and to still enable good security

2026-06-15 20:08:40 UTC

are there any nice Git merge conflict resolution tools that work in the terminal? when i look at the text merge conflict I can never remember which code is which, and I really want to see them side by side
it feels like someone must have written some kind of nice tool in Rust

2026-04-29 11:31:50 UTC

really appreciated this post by Armin Ronacher about the importance of software archival and what might come after GitHub
personally i’m not very enthusiastic about self hosting and this post helped me see why
https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/4/28/before-github/

2026-03-25 19:44:11 UTC

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@nprofile…u76z brb immediately hitting "notify me on launch"

2026-03-10 15:22:59 UTC

i just realized we never reprinted this DNS sticker sheet https://wizardzines.com/zines/dns/
trying to decide if we should bring it back or if it's just a special one-time-only item for folks who bought one of the first 1000 print copies of How DNS Works :)
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/116/205/563/055/724/770/original/fa0e6a5f58ee1c18.png

2026-02-03 20:30:42 UTC

what makes CORS hard to use?

2026-02-02 20:15:17 UTC

i'm thinking about writing a zine reference for CORS, XSS, CSP, CSRF, etc because all the acronyms feel so impossible to remember and it's so useful to know the basics
but.. what is all that stuff _called_? "web security" and "browser security" both feel way too broad. So far I've just been saying "you know, CSRF and CORS and XSS and stuff" to people

2026-01-20 14:34:00 UTC

i like to make websites and I've been slowly realizing that my requirements for making websites might be a little weird
- I have maybe 20 websites (mostly static but not all)
- I want to spend basically 0 time maintaining them, maybe 5 minutes every 2 months at most
- I need to be able to ignore a project for 3 years and then come back and be able to develop it easily
i feel like all of this stuff makes my choice of tech stack different than if I worked on one site full-time

2025-12-04 16:05:09 UTC

might not do this but every so often I think of writing an intro to Git for total beginners because when people ask me for an intro to Git I never know what to recommend
seems hard though, I so rarely write anything for total beginners

2025-10-21 13:50:06 UTC

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@nprofile…azj9 i’ve been thinking of trying to make a curl cheat sheet that covers some of the things that page talks about

2025-10-10 14:23:07 UTC

notes on switching to Helix from vim https://jvns.ca/blog/2025/10/10/notes-on-switching-to-helix-from-vim/

2025-10-06 21:07:49 UTC

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@nprofile…8vqk how do you pull?

2025-10-06 21:04:51 UTC

git usage question: if you use `git pull` and `git push`, how do you usually use them?
possible answers include:
- just run `git push` and `git pull` with no arguments (other than --rebase or --ff-only etc)
- always specify remote/branch with `git push origin main` and `git pull origin main`
- some combination of the above
- something else?
(please only reply if you use both `git pull` and `git push`, I'm very aware of team "I never use `git pull`" :) )
might add some follow up polls to this

2025-08-22 20:16:48 UTC

i've been working on some small updates to git's man pages and I've been noticing that I have an internal "decoder ring" with slightly wrong definitions that I use for git's jargon, like:
ref: a branch or tag
pathspec: a filename
index: staging area
<commit-ish>: a commit ID, or something (like a branch) that you can resolve to a commit ID
<tree-ish>: same thing as commit-ish
(some of these are more "accurate" than others obviously)

2025-08-14 18:40:52 UTC

are there any games that teach C pointers? like flexbox froggy for pointers

2025-08-12 17:47:21 UTC

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@nprofile…etws haha I've been submitting patches on an email mailing list this week and it's been interesting but a bit difficult, a lot of "oh no I have to remember to proofread all my emails to check that they're correctly wrapped to 80 characters otherwise I'll get told off"

2025-08-07 13:48:42 UTC

how would you describe what "git rebase" does in one or two short sentences? Assuming there's already an appropriate diagram you can point to
(I'm doing a small side project around git rebase this week)
(1/?)

2025-08-05 15:26:40 UTC

just noticed Bite Size Command Line came out 7 years ago, I still sometimes forget the syntax for lsof and have to look it up at https://wizardzines.com/comics/lsof/ :)
https://wizardzines.com/zines/bite-size-command-line/
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/976/856/152/494/508/original/40751f83f36bdec6.png

2025-07-31 18:15:34 UTC

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i’m especially curious to hear about efforts and resources to help people install linux that really centre the needs of the user, especially for non-programmers
I feel like linux nerds (i’m one of them!) have a very well deserved bad reputation of exaggerating how easy it is to use Linux (“you don’t need photoshop, just use the GIMP!”🙄) and I’d love to see examples of people doing it in a better way
(2/?)

2025-07-31 17:12:59 UTC

do any of you have organizations in your city that help people install Linux on old unused computers to give the hardware a new life? would love a link to their website!
also curious about what people end up using the machines for in practice, especially if they’re used by non-programmers

2025-07-23 16:58:39 UTC

i've been spending some time trying to learn how to write a basic CRUD website in Go in a way that feels good to me
but on my third attempt I started thinking "this just feels bad", rewrote it using https://hono.dev/, and even though I've never written JS on the server before suddenly everything feels a lot better? the code is really simple, there are very few dependencies, and there isn't all of the boilerplate you have to write with Go

2025-07-23 16:12:36 UTC

i started trying out https://helix-editor.com/ and I've been liking it more than I expected to, it's fun to have an editor that Just Works without any config
going to stick with it for a bit even though there are some things I don't like compared to neovim (different syntax, it crashes sometimes, it doesn't auto-reload changed files, no GUI, I don't like the way :reflow works compared to `gq, I think `Ctrl+C` for commenting code is weird)

2025-07-17 12:26:51 UTC

it's really fun to see the reviews of "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" come in, it looks like the zine is helping people in the way I hoped it would!
you can get it here: https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal/
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/868/565/212/915/994/original/dbfc62da6539d9d1.png

2025-07-02 13:55:47 UTC

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I feel like all of the articles I've read talking about whether SPAs are "bad" or not kind of threw me off though, like I'm sure it's an important discussion in the industry but as someone who has never worked as a web developer personally I just want to make single-page apps sometimes (for example for https://nginx-playground.wizardzines.com/) and sometimes I don't, it just depends on the project
(3/?)

2025-07-02 13:48:01 UTC

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I found this article by Heydon Pickering about how to use semantic HTML 9 months ago and it's been on my mind ever since. I always liked the idea of using semantic HTML but I couldn't figure out how to _do_ it in practice and this article really helped me understand https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/11/css-inheritance-cascade-global-scope-new-old-worst-best-friends/
i found his site (https://heydonworks.com/latest/) to be a helpful example of what it can look like in practice
(2/?)

2025-07-02 13:31:47 UTC

experimenting with a completely different way of making websites this week (semantic html + server rendered html + a tiny bit of htmx instead of single-page-apps with tailwind + vue.js) and I don't think I like it _more_ exactly but it does feel like it might help me make new kinds of websites than the type I normally make
I love making single page apps but it does feel like it has some limits (the limits being the "single page" thing)

2025-06-25 18:53:19 UTC

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@nprofile…q5wq i hope it’s useful!

2025-06-25 15:13:47 UTC

one of my goals with "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is to show you that you have a lot of choices about how your shell behaves, and that a well-configured shell can make your life in the terminal a LOT easier https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/114739372503856382

2025-06-24 17:05:21 UTC

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@nprofile…4mn6 the illustrator (Vladimir) is SO good, often he puts in fun little touches that even I miss until much later

2025-06-24 16:51:22 UTC

delighted to announce that my new zine "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is out today!!
You can get it for $12 USD here: https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/739/372/236/990/812/original/d1a1b721d9092c61.png

2025-06-23 19:59:10 UTC

it's happening! "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is coming out tomorrow!
here's the table of contents:
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/734/448/386/904/912/original/7d90526997e6d05a.png

2025-06-20 19:50:19 UTC

here's the final version of the "redirects cheat sheet" draft I posted a while back!
("The Secret Rules of the Terminal is finished! 95 beta readers have read it! the copy editor is done! technical review is done! the illustrator has made the cover! It's going to be out on *****Tuesday June 24*****")
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/717/426/615/255/898/original/6eb25d19670f06b2.png

2025-06-17 15:56:56 UTC

I've still never gotten into `fzf` (and maybe I never will!) but I think it's really cool that you can use a fzf 1-liner to make things like this little UI for reviewing git commits
https://jvns.ca/til/fzf-preview-git-commits/
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/699/522/016/502/728/original/cfae4ffab1cd5494.png

2025-06-11 15:59:50 UTC

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@nprofile…4mn6 oops I was thinking of "advanced programming in the unix environment". i actually really love the writing in "the unix programming environment" other than how outdated it is

2025-06-11 15:23:57 UTC

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@nprofile…fn6s it always makes me kind of irrationally mad when people recommend that book, like I'm sure it's good or whatever but to me it's like "this is a C programming book!! what is the point of this? I'm never going to write a C program!"

2025-06-11 15:11:43 UTC

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something a friend said to me a little while back that stuck with me was that the Unix programming environment kind of assumes on some level that you're a C programmer, like a lot of the tools were written by and for C programmers and so it's sometimes useful to "think like a C programmer" to try to understand why things were built the way they were

2025-06-11 14:43:57 UTC

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related to this `make` post I've been very vaguely thinking of writing a "things that are useful to know about C even if you're never going to write a C program in your life" zine because I feel like I get a surprising amount of mileage out of understanding C at a very basic level even though I have never really written a C or C++ program and do not plan to
but I have to actually get the terminal zine published before I start thinking about whether I want to do that or not

2025-06-11 12:38:24 UTC

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@nprofile…etws @nprofile…0z8e is there an advantage to passing makefile variables as command line arguments? I noticed that you could do that but it felt kind of weird to me so I ignored it

2025-06-10 20:49:37 UTC

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@nprofile…0z8e ugh yeah this is kind of a weird example! the reason I ended up using CPPFLAGS instead of CXXFLAGS is that the makefile hardcodes CXXFLAGS to something else so that was the only way I could figure out to pass flags to the compiler without editing the makefile?
but maybe there's another way to do it that I'm missing

2025-06-10 20:35:06 UTC

Using `make` to compile C programs (for non-C-programmers) https://jvns.ca/blog/2025/06/10/how-to-compile-a-c-program/

2025-06-04 15:23:10 UTC

was just reminded of how much I love the debugging manifesto poster that Inner Loop Press designed for Wizard Zines, you can get it for $20 US + shipping here: https://store.wizardzines.com/products/poster-debugging-manifesto
I'm SO delighted with how it turned out (also for more of Inner Loop's work, see https://www.innerloop.press/)
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/625/779/099/182/948/original/e347c05587891fc6.png

2025-06-03 17:15:17 UTC

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@nprofile…nrec do you know if there's some kind of "just cache my site please" service worker incantation that people can just copy and paste? (maybe there's a library?)

2025-06-03 17:03:41 UTC

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@nprofile…nrec i don't know why I find it so counterintuitive that service workers are what does that, I guess because in my mind the browser "already does" caching, so it feels like you should be able to just set some kind of caching header to tell the browser "hey, if the user refreshes the page when they're offline, just serve the cached version"
I know that that isn't how it works but I guess I always find it weird that you have to introduce a bunch of extra JS code to get that behaviour

2025-06-03 16:45:23 UTC

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@nprofile…nrec I guess i don’t understand what the function could be of service workers in a totally static site with no backend at all (maybe there isn’t one?)

2025-06-03 12:19:53 UTC

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@nprofile…nrec i noticed your conclusions on this one was that this wasn’t actually a “good idea”, i love bad ideas but i’m curious about whether there’s a place service workers would actually make sense in a static site

2025-06-02 20:30:12 UTC

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@nprofile…md7n oh can you access a google sheet as JSON? I thought it only supported CSV!

2025-06-02 19:54:19 UTC

making a list of tricks for making static sites (just HTML/CSS/JS) that do cool or useful things
so far I have:
- store all the state in the URL
- use localStorage for state
- make a client for an API that supports cross-origin requests (like the mastodon API)
- load a bunch of data from a static JSON file
some things I've seen but haven't done myself:
- use github as your data storage (like what Decap CMS does)
- use SQLite from a static website with no backend

2025-05-26 16:14:04 UTC

I always find it a bit surprising that "looking up executables in PATH" isn't implemented in one central place (there are at least 3 on my machine: in libc, my shell, in Go, and probably more that I don't know about)
it's a weird thing because there are actually many different implementations, but I think in general the implementations act similarly enough that you can pretend there's only 1 implementation, I've never actually run into a problem caused by this

2025-05-23 19:17:55 UTC

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@nprofile…g3gc kind of interesting to imagine a world where `sudo` is a shell builtin and where it can actually be separated from `echo blah` somehow to make that sort of thing possible but I feel like the security implications of that are too scary for it to become a reality

2025-05-23 19:05:31 UTC

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@nprofile…g3gc I'm not sure what you mean, the shell does not have parentheses that let you change the order of operations in that way

2025-05-23 18:24:44 UTC

I think I have finally managed to articulate this very fundamental but slightly counterintuitive fact about how shell redirection works
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/558/545/285/733/477/original/706a365db5e20d39.png

2025-05-16 11:54:39 UTC

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a couple of people asked what the point of the “login shell” distinction is in this diagram. here’s my understanding:
- sometimes your end up with nested shell sessions, for example if you start tmux
- you might want to avoid loading your shell config twice, for example to avoid PATH duplication
- the idea of a “login shell” is that one way to avoid this is by loading different config for the initial shell you open (the “login shell”) and for any nested shells
(3/?)

2025-05-15 20:24:18 UTC

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also even though this diagram is so complicated it doesn’t talk about how the shell is used differently on Linux vs Mac, like in a Linux desktop (AFAIK) your window manager will often run a login shell when you login to the system. So you can use .profile to set up PATH so that it’ll work inside graphical applications
but I don’t think that happens on a Mac

2025-05-15 15:33:44 UTC

i enjoy this flowchart explaining how bash decides whether to use .bashrc or .bash_profile https://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup-scripts.html, mostly because it makes me understand better why I could never understand how the 2 config files worked when I used bash
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/512/574/584/965/099/original/7dfff4e1a96daf2b.png

2025-05-13 13:27:54 UTC

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@nprofile…al9s hmm it feels like the norms around lua functionality are very different than the norms around vimscript plugins though? like I'm used to setting up linting like this:
let g:ale_linters = {
\ 'go': ['gopls', 'staticcheck'],
\ 'python': ['pyright'],
\ 'javascript': ['deno'],
\ 'rust': ['rls']
}
but if I want to use neovim's built in LSP to set up something equivalent, it seems like it requires much more work. Like I tried to set it up but couldn't see error messages by default

2025-05-13 12:47:01 UTC

every so often I think of moving my neovim config from the regular ~/.vimrc to a Lua config but I think I fundamentally just do not want to be able to write arbitrary code to configure my text editor
having 300 lines of vim config can be confusing enough sometimes, also having to debug Lua code seems like it would make the situation even harder

2025-05-12 19:37:46 UTC

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more filename tips
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/496/547/189/392/217/original/c59e3f774b78b782.png

2025-05-12 19:32:49 UTC

filename tips (in the shell)
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/496/527/698/941/398/original/f958e6b3553b3b4d.png

2025-05-09 16:09:04 UTC

I may never do this but every so often I think about building a simple open source ebook fulfillment service that integrates with Shopify
(I mean probably other ecommerce platforms too, but personally the thing I need is a Shopify integration)

2025-05-09 15:47:20 UTC

contributed a feature to the iTerm Color Schemes library yesterday to make the colorschemes work with any terminal emulator that supports the OSC 4 escape codes for setting the terminal's color palette (including GNOME Terminal, I believe the Linux console, and a bunch of others) https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes/?tab=readme-ov-file#generic-color-schemes

2025-05-07 18:41:46 UTC

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ok here are a few Tab tips in the shell
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/468/015/434/390/096/original/9160c771439cd41e.png

2025-05-07 17:53:24 UTC

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writing about tab completion in the shell is reminding me of how much I rely on being able to tab complete from the *middle* of a filename in fish
like if the file starts with a weird character -- no problem! I can just type some characters from the middle and press 'Tab’

2025-05-07 17:08:31 UTC

trying to come up with some advice around quoting/escaping/tab completion in the shell and not coming up with as much as I thought I would! so far I have:
- sometimes you can drag a file from a GUI file manager to escape it properly
- tab completion is great
mostly looking for advice around using the shell interactively, not scripting (so not "always quote your shell variables”)

2025-05-06 20:44:07 UTC

trying to write a super short 10-line example program to give an idea of what the first step would be if you were writing your own terminal emulator (create a "pseudoterminal pair") https://gist.github.com/jvns/fe878425a1663132b0ed1153b55bb73e
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/462/834/213/134/443/original/17d66dd338a8c2f0.png

2025-05-06 18:39:21 UTC

copy and paste in the terminal
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/462/343/580/800/518/original/8c6566d3028dd264.png

2025-05-02 17:14:29 UTC

stdin, stdout, and stderr
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/439/360/637/117/452/original/a217b5ccec3c19f9.png

2025-04-24 19:33:37 UTC

will probably delete this if I get an answer, but: if you configure your history size in bash to store more history, do you use HISTSIZE? HISTFILESIZE? both?

2025-04-24 16:30:22 UTC

does anyone know if there's a way to search a man page for a specific flag? whenever I search for “ -C" I always end up finding a bunch of other mentions of the flag instead of the flag's documentation itself

2025-04-21 21:06:35 UTC

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also this page on colour contains one of the few grumpy comments in the zine, it might not make it into the final version tbh because I try to avoid being a curmudgeon
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/377/987/870/951/432/original/13da33617f390b76.png

2025-04-21 20:58:27 UTC

how terminal colours work
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/377/955/932/615/889/original/9152a61a75a235cf.png

2025-04-21 18:11:22 UTC

recently I changed my shell on the servers I run to /usr/bin/fish and it feels "wrong" to do but I've been really enjoying it

2025-04-17 18:34:59 UTC

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anyway a much more practical use of stty is to disable `Ctrl+S`
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/354/742/577/288/442/original/cf623b80f2e4a285.png

2025-04-17 18:25:50 UTC

current status: putting a few weird terminal facts that I do not have any practical use for into the terminal zine
(mostly I’m keeping it extremely practical but I think it's fun to have SOME weird stuff)
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/354/706/595/195/976/original/e1f11b7051de21d7.png

2025-04-09 20:07:22 UTC

i'm trying to articulate my approach to colours in the terminal and I guess it's:
1. make every program use the 16 ANSI colours, except for neovim, theme that with 24-bit colour because theming vim with ANSI colours is a pain
2. pick a terminal emulator theme I like for the ANSI colours
3. use “minimum contrast" in the terminal emulator to avoid having unreadable text because something chose a bad combo of ANSI colours for my theme

2025-04-09 12:12:04 UTC

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@nprofile…s0sr oh interesting how do you have your colourscheme set up in gnome terminal? are you using the defaults or a custom theme?

2025-04-08 21:09:10 UTC

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i guess the point (which seems obvious in retrospect) is that finding a terminal colourscheme that never clashes is fundamentally impossible and all you can do is find something “good enough” and then rely on the terminal emulator to enforce a minimum contrast to fix the bad cases

2025-04-08 19:56:50 UTC

does anyone have tips for setting up a colourscheme in the shell that doesn't have some horrible clash in it somewhere? I'm trying to write down advice but personally my approach has been "just use Solarized Light & accept that some things will look bad occasionally” and that doesn't seem great (some "bad" things in the screenshots)
curious to hear anything that's worked for you! The only thing I know of that seems useful is the "minimum contrast" feature some terminal emulators have
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/304/103/342/505/827/original/b9c04748a1976488.png
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/304/103/631/952/145/original/007b67d4b109fd47.png

2025-04-07 19:48:14 UTC

types of terminal programs
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/298/407/144/798/299/original/939c02405f1573ed.png

2025-04-04 18:47:31 UTC

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@nprofile…2jmx I feel like the rules for interacting with them (how you enter text, how you quit, what the mouse does, etc) are completely different and you can’t really infer how to use a text editor from using any other terminal program, you really need to make the effort to learn its rules specifically

2025-04-04 18:03:34 UTC

thinking today about how there are sort of 4 "types" of terminal programs, each with their own UI conventions for how you interact with them:
1. REPLs (the shell, ipython, sqlite3, etc) - you quit with `Ctrl+D`, usually readline-like shortcuts work
2. "full screen" TUIs (htop, less, lazygit, etc) -- you quit with `q`, sometimes can use arrow keys/mouse
3. text editors (vim & friends) -- each editor has its own rules
4. “regular" noninteractive or lightly interactive programs (like grep or git)

2025-04-02 20:18:40 UTC

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also a couple of people asked about networking tools so here is “every networking tool I know” from a few years back
(which for some reason includes several tools that I have never used)
https://wizardzines.com/networking-tools-poster.pdf
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/270/215/595/663/254/original/3e5fbcaf552c069a.png

2025-04-02 19:39:48 UTC

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where this came from was really just I ran `history` and I wondered if everything I used that felt like a "core unix tool" would fit on one piece of letter paper and it seemed to fit

2025-04-02 19:33:48 UTC

every core unix command I use
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/270/037/180/530/660/original/e0f100e6afb150d9.png

2025-04-02 18:06:08 UTC

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@nprofile…ndcz @nprofile…q5wq has a book about DNSSEC

2025-04-02 18:05:10 UTC

spotted this van today
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/269/690/539/040/678/original/726aec7acc6beb1f.jpeg

2025-04-02 15:19:25 UTC

it's the 3-year anniversary of "How DNS Works" coming out! To celebrate, we're giving away 300 PDF copies to anyone who $12 USD is a lot of money for
use code BUYONEGIVEONE at checkout to get one ❤️
https://wizardzines.com/zines/dns/
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/269/038/624/150/996/original/845186cc2a2a57da.png
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/269/038/946/878/527/original/238a31f8c1fbc2f7.png

2025-04-01 15:23:51 UTC

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feels weird that if you want to know how to use "the terminal", even if you have an unlimited amount of time and energy, there really isn't documentation that you can reasonably read
like I guess you could read your shell's manual, your terminal emulator's docs, the xterm docs (because your terminal is probably "xterm compatible”), find the man pages (how?) for every popular command and read those, then `man termios` and `man stty` and the other conceptual man pages, but there's a lot more

2025-04-01 15:13:28 UTC

I think I've finally realized that a weird thing about the terminal is that a lot of things just are not actually documented in any reasonable way? Like if you want to know more about `Ctrl+C` and you use `zsh` for example, the only official documentation I can really find is `man termios` or man stty
realistically in practice I think most people do not read "official documentation" for stuff like this, it's easier to rely on friendly coworkers / blog posts / stack overflow

2025-03-31 20:55:10 UTC

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something else I learned from reading `man bash` is that by default when you close a terminal tab, bash by default won't send a `SIGHUP` to kill background processes unless you set the `huponexit` option
which is defensible but does explain a lot

2025-03-31 20:41:23 UTC

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I am learning some upsetting-to-me things from reading the bash man page, for example that in bash `source blah.sh` will by default search all directories in your PATH for a file called `blah.sh`

2025-03-31 20:13:36 UTC

i can tell I've been writing this terminal zine for too long because I just had the thought "oh, it might be fun to read `man bash`”

2025-03-29 13:06:38 UTC

there's something I find so fun about doing very occasional tech support for family members. yesterday I figured out how to transfer photos from an Android phone to a Macbook (MacDroid!) and it's nice to spend 46 minutes figuring out some computer nonsense because I know it's so much easier for me than it is for them.

2025-03-28 14:08:14 UTC

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@nprofile…ncsf curious to hear what smarter solutions are out there than “find a old cheap laptop, maybe put it in a fun box, maybe plug in a speaker”

2025-03-27 18:59:51 UTC

escape codes
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/235/931/775/645/428/original/d270c8585191b905.png

2025-03-26 19:00:57 UTC

slowly working on a mega terminal cheat sheet
here's a link to the draft as a PDF: https://jvns.ca/terminal-cheat-sheet-draft.pdf
https://cdn.masto.host/socialjvnsca/media_attachments/files/114/230/273/792/769/519/original/f5a4f8650092c176.png

2025-03-21 20:12:07 UTC

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@nprofile…qnxh oh interesting does vim let you exec programs interactively? I always thought it only let you run programs noninteractively which always feels really different to me. When I run `!ssh localhost` in vim, I just get the error message "exiting because stdin is not a terminal"

2025-03-21 20:00:09 UTC

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@nprofile…qnxh totally! it's a bit weird to talk about because of course the shell is just a user program, but it does have a very specific role and I feel like that role is somewhat constrained by Unix's design. Like there are interfaces (like `tcsetpgrp`) that AFAIK only the shell uses and feel designed to be used in an extremely specific way by the shell.

2025-03-21 16:36:53 UTC

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@nprofile…ma3g yep! you're still going to have the shell hanging out in the background (to come back when you close the REPL) but it's not doing anything at that point

2025-03-21 15:25:56 UTC

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@nprofile…hu2s I don't know yet! I can't think of a time when knowing about process groups has been useful to me and I want to keep it practical. Would love examples of specific situations where it's useful to know about process groups

2025-03-21 15:23:38 UTC

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@nprofile…vkmy ^Z is also the terminal driver (like ^C), for `fg` the shell talks to the terminal driver to tell it to put the process in the foreground (this is one of the "obscure things" haha)