anyway that's all for my long ramble i just think using comic sans for coding would be funny lol

code isn't just about text; the debates about syntax and tools reflect that.

but all of us assume that this is the case. and this is how things have been for decades. maybe a different perspective could genuinely provide some really cool ideas that go beyond "just interesting"?

text purism and terminals are dead. or dying, at least. and our tools should start to better reflect that.

(i'm not talking about markdown/latex/whatever, i like those)

which one would you prefer: an ide witj a terminal, or a terminal with an ide? emacs has definitely shown me that i prefer the latter. and emacs isn't even that slow or bloated. it literally feels like an upgrade to the terminal, and it has the same keyboard-centric workflow.

but would i really want to do everything in the terminal? no, not really. command-based workflows, as flexible as they are, are just that: workflows. and every developer has their own. but terminals don't provide the flexibility of creating alternative design workflows.

i certainly love terminals; they were what made me become invested in linux. their minimalism and simplicity is definitely something i rarely see nowadays, and it's a breath of fresh air when i can just... do something in one that i otherwise would not have done.

this is certainly true, but i think it misses the point. the problem of variable fonts stems from the core issue: we are still reliant on fixed columns, a holdover from terminals

you could argue that this would leave terminal users behind. now that developers have to follow the strict syntax, other ways of organizing code are now impossible. raw text editing would also become a pain, as you'd now have to make sure the syntax was correct.

this could even mean languages could start making "strict" syntax, ensuring that alignment would work for any edge case

having a strict syntax would also mean text manipulation tools could become more useful.

all of the alignment would be done visually. so the minor mode never directly edits the contents of the file. emacs and treesitters already provides the functionality for this to be reality

this would mean no more arguments about how to align text, whether to use spaces or tabs or 2-column or 4-column indents. and variable fonts of course

gnome if it was good

funnily enough, i tried out silverblue first before getting into nixos. heard about it being "atomic" and "reproducible" but it never really quite clicked with me

maybe in an alternate universe silverblue could've worked for me but nix caught my attention and now i'm in a toxic relationship with it

mixing an undocumented bleeding-edge style of developing packages with an undocumented legacy style of developing packages will definitely fix all of our problems!

otherwise, nix seems to solve a lot of the problems that some tools in the ros2 ecosystem such as colcon and rosdep try to address

it can also exist alongside preexisting ros2 tools, so there's no need for everyone to shift immediately

docker containers do exist but are not that great imo...

some limitations that could be deal-breakers:
- no stable cache (right now, at least. the ros2 package repository is *massive* and the current maintainers probably don't have resources to build every single package)
- another arcane language to learn after you've already learned about ros2