Show HN: Toast, a beautiful by default in terminal IDE

Posted by dividedcomet 22 hours ago

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Comment by gopalv 21 hours ago

The "Emacs doesn't have a file-tree" is when I stopped short and wondered what this person's background is in IDEs.

My emacs days are 1999 during my "functional or get out" phase, but my .emacs had close to 4000 lines in it, including xterm mouse support, a clone of midnight commander + sftp to a wehbost and deep integration with ctags/cscope/c++filt. There was even a line by line debugger with custom .gdbinit commands - look at the php project's gdbinit[1] if you want an idea of how to walk your own super special data structures.

You can't put Emacs in an IDE comparison and say anything about features without at least one person saying "well, actually".

I eventually switched to vim but that had to do with needing to ssh into 100k+ machines on support rotation & never having emacs on any of them.

[1] - https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/.gdbinit

Comment by godelski 20 hours ago

He said the same about vim, but did everyone forget about netrw? Here, go into vim and type `:Ex`. You can also have mouse support. (Netrw can also do trees if you don't like the format, go look at `g:netrw_liststyle`)

My friend on eMacs say something similar, but you don't really need as many plugins as people typically use. There's lots of native ways to do things. It's totally fine to prefer NerdTree over the native netrw but it's not like you can't do file exploring. Hell, I use fzf most times (`:GFiles`). But what I don't like is when people confidently say "x can't do y" when it can. I'll give people a break if it requires plugins or complicated commands, but native ones? It just shows ignorance.

While we're on the topic, stop using Esc, use <C-[>. You don't need Esc. And type `set -o vi` into bash/zsh. It's still worth learning your tools. You'll find lots of solutions to problems that only exist because of ignorance. Maybe those solutions are better, but the bigger problem seems to be ignorance. It's fine to be ignorant too! There's a shit ton of docs, no one expects you to read it all. But it's a good place to start

Comment by oxidant 18 hours ago

I like capslock bound to esc.

Comment by godelski 17 hours ago

There's nothing wrong with that. Everyone has their own vimrc, you do you.

But most people don't know about <C-[>, which works across your terminal, It isn't just a vim thing.

Comment by LiamPowell 20 hours ago

It also incorrectly says that Emacs has no mouse support. When you first open Emacs the default buffer has clickable links in it, it's impossible to miss the fact that Emacs has mouse support if you ever even open it.

Comment by apetresc 20 hours ago

Considering that the very first paragraph of their README has:

> toast is for the developer who wants to stay in their terminal without spending hours getting it up to snuff.

I think he knows you can get anything you want in emacs/vim. The pitch is that toast is batteries-included.

Comment by godelski 20 hours ago

Mouse support and filetrees are included in both vim and emacs. The batteries are already included and have been for essentially ever

Comment by lilbigdoot 20 hours ago

Plenty of easy configs for them too. Lazyvim has been pretty batteries included and easy to modify for me and I'm definitely the type that did not read much of the docs

Comment by alecfv26 21 hours ago

I’m surprised you wouldn’t use TRAMP for remote access then?

Comment by mplanchard 20 hours ago

Yeah, speedbar and dired are built-in. Speedbar by default still opens in a new frame I think, but in emacs 31 there’s a config option to make it open in a side window without any additional tweaking needed.

Comment by cyberax 21 hours ago

Sigh.

Long time ago, in mid-2000-s I tried to switch to Emacs or Vim from Visual Studio.

I wanted to have a simple project file tree as a side panel and multiple editor tabs on the right. I spent a week toying with various elisp scripts, Vim plugins, and digging out information from a then-moribund XEmacs mailing list.

And I couldn't do what I wanted in the end. Nothing worked seamlessly or reliably.

Can this be done out-of-the-box now?

Comment by iLemming 16 hours ago

> Can this be done out-of-the-box now?

Yes, with built-in packages there are at least two different ways - speedbar, or Dired in a side window. And what even "out-of-the-box" means? In Emacs-land packages are not like extensions in other editors and IDEs, they more like recipe books. You can collect literally over a thousand of them without ever explicitly loading them until that specific moment that happens once in a decade and you won't ever notice their presence until then. And there are tons and tons of different packages that do the sidebar directory listing - treemacs, dired-sidebar, dired-subtree, direx, ztree, etc. You seriously thought that in 50 effing years nobody, just nobody thought of making a sidebar directory tree that works in Emacs?

> Nothing worked seamlessly or reliably.

Skill issue. You. You couldn't figure it out. And then decided it can't be done, period. Brilliant.

Comment by godelski 20 hours ago

  > Can this be done out-of-the-box now?
It always could be. Go into vim and type `let g:netrw_liststyle = 3` then `:Vex`. The window size won't be what you want, but is the core idea? Because if it is, you just set the liststyle in your vimrc and have netrw start on load, with proper pane location and width.

That or most people have used NerdTree for a decade

Comment by cyberax 20 hours ago

I see, so nothing has actually changed within the last 20 years.

A project tree is NOT a file list. It's a persistent panel that allows you to navigate within the project. It should also integrate with tools like recursive search (so it doesn't recurse into ignored folders like `node_modules`), build tools, code intelligence, and a debugger.

Comment by godelski 17 hours ago

A lot has changed, but a lot of features have been there for a long time too. There's a reason people use neovim too

  > It's a persistent panel that allows you to navigate within the project.
Trivial to do with netrw. Again, NerdTree is a common alternative

  > It should also integrate with tools like recursive search (so it doesn't recurse into ignored folders like `node_modules`)
`:vim /re/ */* +`

Or checkout telescope, FZF, or rg. There's plenty of integrations

  > build tools
`:make`, `:grep`, `:compiler`. I mean you can do any terminal command...

Or plugins, dispatch.vim, overseer.nvim, vim-test

  > code intelligence
Ctags, or nvim has a LSP so I don't use ctags (or cscope) much anymore. Common plugins are: coc.nvim, ALE, vim-lsp, YouCompleteMe

  > debugger
termdebug Is native? Also check nvim-dap (Neovim), vimspector

Most of the plugins listed mostly just make things nicer, not add functionality that doesn't exist. There's a ton of native things I didn't even list.

I'm not saying you have to like it nor that it looks/works the way you like/want/are used to, but you're claiming the functionality doesn't exist and that isn't correct. If it want you argue over style, that's perfectly okay. The reason a lot of us use vim/emacs is because we customize the tools to what works best for us. That's one of their best features! You don't have to use vim, emacs, or any TUI. The tools you should use are the tools best suited to you. Full stop.

But I'll also add that I haven't seen a single thing VS Code or any GUI IDE can do that I can't do in vim while also using a lot fewer compute resources to accomplish it. Personally, I program better and faster in vim because I have years of experience in it and I'm at the point that reaching for the mouse just slows me down. The learning curve isn't that steep to get pretty comfortable in vim, but the depth is enormous and that takes a long time to master. But honestly, the latter is true about most tools. And frankly, I'd rather have a tool where I can keep progressing and do crazy things in than a tool that caps my limits or puts a huge barrier if I want to extend. I moved away from IDEs because I found I could do more in vim quicker. But that's me, not you. Your experience will certainly be different and there's nothing wrong with that. We're just different people and that's perfectly fine.

The only thing really being argued here is your claim that "x can't do y" and as a user of "x", I assure you, I can do "y"

Comment by cyberax 16 hours ago

As I said, nothing has changed.

Instead of a coherent IDE, you have a lot of semi-broken pieces that don't work well together.

And that's also why projects like this one are really helpful.

Comment by godelski 8 hours ago

K

Comment by flexagoon 19 hours ago

I don't know about emacs, but its definitely doable in neovim. I don't know if the built in file explorer suits your needs, but now that nvim has a proper built in plugin manager, it's just one line of config to install neo-tree or something like that.

Comment by cyberax 18 hours ago

`neo-tree` is indeed close to what I'd love to see in a real text-mode IDE. I'm going to play around with it.

Comment by mplanchard 20 hours ago

Yes, speedbar, with speedbar-prefer-window set to t

Or use any of the various file tree packages in [M]ELPA

Comment by kccqzy 20 hours ago

XEmacs has always been moribund. Use GNU Emacs.

Comment by jasonjmcghee 21 hours ago

First file I look at (concerning):

"github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/breadcrumbs" "github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/closedialog" "github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/commandpalette" "github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/editor"

Comment by SahAssar 19 hours ago

I'm not a golang person, but does this even compile like that? Do people not even run a build anymore?

Comment by Instantnoodl 20 hours ago

A bit hilarious. I'm wondering if he even knows go or took a look at the code once :D

Comment by gkoberger 21 hours ago

It's interesting that it brags about no AI as a feature, but the website (and maybe the product itself?) was clearly built using AI.

Comment by dividedcomet 21 hours ago

Yep, I have 2 kids under 1 so this project is either built with AI or it’s not built. I put that line in because the IDE aspect doesn’t need agent management or anything. Other tools are better for that.

Comment by vouaobrasil 17 hours ago

Then maybe sometimes it's better to take a break and not bend the natural constraints of life for once. I mean, I'm all for easing some of life with automation but it seems that a general trend is emerging where people will just keep on going no matter what, when maybe we should just stop once in a while.

Comment by skinfaxi 17 hours ago

I have been feeling an increasing self-imposed pressure to get more done with AI. Similar to the feeling I get when I play factorio too long. It's like the frontier of possibility has radically shifted and I feel almost guilty for not jumping into it. Tugging at me..

Idk the point of my comment but I feel you.

Comment by latexr 20 hours ago

It would still be nice if you stated upfront that this is built with AI. The people who are interested in “no AI features” are likely to also be the ones who do not want something built with AI. It would help to be clear about the project’s stance on the matter.

Comment by dividedcomet 20 hours ago

For sure the right call, really appreciate it. Judging from the comments my lack of product and marketing skills is showing.

Comment by adamddev1 15 hours ago

The first thing I notice is an AGENTS.md in the repo.

Comment by bigfishrunning 21 hours ago

Irish twins! congratulations :)

Comment by dividedcomet 21 hours ago

Thanks so much! Only reason this got posted today is because everyone is home sick

Comment by 21 hours ago

Comment by kolme 21 hours ago

Vim does have mouse support.

Comment by kccqzy 21 hours ago

And so does Emacs. I don’t think this person has really used them.

Comment by dbalatero 21 hours ago

Making these kinds of AI projects with fancy READMEs give you a veneer of authority, but the lack of earned wisdom tends to stick out once a few people glance at it.

Comment by dividedcomet 21 hours ago

Yeah maybe not the best wording. It’s more meant that ideally toast can be fully used with a cursor for interactions. I don’t think you can exit vim or emacs just by clicking on a button?

Comment by gnufied 20 hours ago

You absolutely can exit Emacs by clicking a button! Even when it is running in terminal. You just need menu-bar-mode (which is enabled by default) and enabling xterm-mouse-mode (which also should be enabled by default) - https://asciinema.org/a/rprH0gLSkrUz2cqr

Comment by kccqzy 20 hours ago

You can: emacs has a menu bar and you can quit emacs that way. If you write code in your .emacs.d to turn off the menu bar, then I think you can be trusted to use the keyboard to quit emacs.

Comment by pwinnski 20 hours ago

I think you're learning that Toast exists due to "skill issues."

Comment by iLemming 16 hours ago

You can exit Emacs by clicking a button, by making a mouse gesture, by telling it via voice command, by key-press, by modal key-chord sequence, by writing into a file, by selecting a menu item, by directly evaling (kill-emacs) command, by cookie in a file you merely visit, by a keyboard macro replayed from a register, by an abbrev whose expansion hook quits, by evaling an Org-mode source block, via a timer, via built-in solar and lunar calendars, by a shell command run inside Emacs that kills its own parent, by SIGTERM or SIGHUP from outside, by closing the last frame under the WM, by an LLM agent with an eval tool, and by pulling the power cord.

"I don't think" is never a good argument for making wide claims about anything.

Comment by Hugsbox 20 hours ago

Vim has full mouse support. Not only can you exit, but you can even save using just the mouse.

Comment by SoftTalker 19 hours ago

Emacs in a terminal might not, depending on config and terminal capabilities.

Comment by schainks 21 hours ago

> toast is for the developer who wants to stay in their terminal without spending hours getting it up to snuff.

I need a terminal that just works. If it doesn't work out of the box with sensible defaults, it is indeed not up to snuff, and therefore thrown away immediately. Don't ask me to use your buggy-vibe coded thing if it's not up to snuff, right?

This is coming from someone who did spend hundreds of hours learning to customize their terminal, their vim environment, and put all of it in source control to rot away.

Comment by DanielHB 20 hours ago

I got so annoyed with this and the fact that I do development in both mac and linux that switched to do all my development inside a container.

I just made a bash script that shells into the container (or starts it if it is not already running) and in there everything is set up.

Comment by s_dev 20 hours ago

I have a script that changes the background colour of my terminal based on whatever directory or server I'm in. That's enough beauty for me, I do believe there is such a thing as over configuring and defaults are very powerful.

This seems like all those UI designers who have a crack at redoing Wikipedia and then fail miserably because they just plaster whatever trend on top of something that is universally good.

Comment by pwinnski 20 hours ago

I'm really happy that we live in a world in which people who don't know how to use the tools they have (and can't be bothered to find out) can use a coding agent to make their own tool that does what they want the way they want it to!

I'm really sad that those people keep releasing those tools to other people via cookie-cutter websites filled with misinformation instead of just enjoying them privately.

Comment by iLemming 16 hours ago

> I'm really happy that we live in a world in which people who don't know how to use the tools

It's not a happy world. It's dystopian. I really don't like how unskilled people get confidence for creating novelty using AI and then dare to put themselves on a pedestal next to bona fide creators. It is robbing them of trust and authenticity.

My neighbor, who barely survived through high school, happily begged me to buy her book: "I created something very special to me. I'm asking my friends to support me by ordering my book. There is a lot of useful information inside based on years of research and observations, and months of putting everything together." I knew it would be complete and utter bullshit, yet I was curious. I ordered "the book". It is chock-full of misspelled words and the substance is just pure garbage. It's a waste of human potential, it's a waste of resources, but hey, now we have yet another fucking "author". Terrific.

Comment by skinfaxi 16 hours ago

> I'm really sad that those people keep releasing those tools to other people via cookie-cutter websites filled with misinformation instead of just enjoying them privately

Why would that make you really sad? If something scratches your itch, it might scratch someone else's, too. It's kind of like blogging for yourself when you solve an issue.

Comment by 20 hours ago

Comment by LiamPowell 20 hours ago

I don't understand the trend of forcing everything into terminals. It's needlessly constraining and it's much more work that just using Qt (or any other UI framework).

Comment by dividedcomet 20 hours ago

For me it’s that why do I need another application open? I have my coding agents in the terminal, I should also be able to traverse and read a codebase in the terminal as well

Comment by LiamPowell 20 hours ago

Why do you want you coding agents to be in a terminal? A terminal is missing latex rendering, inline images, a browser showing what the agent is clicking on, being able to view a spreadsheet and then select a region to reference in the conversation, clickable links when it references a specific line number with mouse-over previews, and interactive inline visualisations. A coding agent missing any of those is a significantly worse experience, yet people are for some reason willing to give up all of them to have their coding agents run in a terminal. It's not even like you get a familiar environment to work in, nothing that you set up in your terminal carries over into your agent or IDE.

Comment by flexagoon 19 hours ago

Terminals have had inline images for a long time at this point

Comment by colesantiago 20 hours ago

Exactly.

We need this terminal TUI nonsense trend to completely die.

Stop using TUIs! They are garbage.

Honestly, the GUI is more intuitive and everyone can use it.

Comment by evanjrowley 20 hours ago

But GUIs are less useful for remote access unless you want to take on the challenge of creating a web front-end for everything.

Comment by dllthomas 20 hours ago

Neat, but I'm pretty happy with my disintegrated development environment.

Comment by dim13 21 hours ago

Nerdtree is such a waste of screen real estate. I prefer netrw.

Comment by 21 hours ago

Comment by eleventen 20 hours ago

I have long wanted a lightweight terminal-based editor that understands VS Code .code-workspace configuration files. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editing/workspaces/worksp...

I have so much shit now that I have custom workspaces to deal with because "repository" has stopped being the correct boundary to think about software development (for me). It would be great if _any_ decent editor would support these, especially Zed.

Comment by dividedcomet 20 hours ago

Throw an issue up there and I can try to take a whack at it!

Comment by krogenx 21 hours ago

Now just add a terminal inside the IDE and we’re gold.

Comment by OSaMaBiNLoGiN 21 hours ago

vim has a built in file tree. You didn't even proof-read your readme.

Christ.

Comment by dividedcomet 21 hours ago

Poor wording, more so meant that when I drop into vim, vi, or emacs I have no way to (without some external knowledge) know how to open a file tree. Just a barrier to usage is all.

Comment by fwip 20 hours ago

By external knowledge, do you mean knowing how the program you're using works?

Comment by dividedcomet 20 hours ago

the point of the GUI is that folks can intuit how a program works without having to be versed in how it works.

Comment by fwip 16 hours ago

Okay. For what it's worth, vim tells you that you can type :help to get help every time you start it up. It would take a while until you got to the section about the file tree, though.

Comment by david38 16 hours ago

Three IDEs in one day. What’s going on? This, txt, and Rune

Comment by colesantiago 21 hours ago

> "No AI features"

> Sees "Claude"

Now almost 90% of projects on GitHub including existing projects are now slop or are adding slop.

Many projects are getting contaminated with AI, and even Linux is getting contaminated with this.

There is a list of projects that have non-slop alternatives one can use instead.

https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware

Comment by jjice 21 hours ago

Do you count any use of LLMs, including highly reviewed and controlled use as "slop"?

The idea that there can be no high quality use of LLMs to aid software development is lacking a lot of nuance.

Comment by aniviacat 21 hours ago

The files (even the go.mod) contain references to "yourusername". You can be certain this project's LLM use was not highly reviewed and controlled.

Comment by delis-thumbs-7e 21 hours ago

If it is high quality use, we would not notice the AI. It would just be good code.

Comment by eikenberry 20 hours ago

But this is not what that site tracks. It lists any project with any LLM usage or potential usage (eg. permissive AI usage policy, but no evidence of AI use) without any caveats. It is an extreme, absolutely no AI usage, stance.

Comment by s_dev 20 hours ago

It's amazing, people act as if there wasn't shit code before LLMs.

LLMs are just another multiplier. A liability in the hands of incompetence and an asset in the hands competence.

Another tool, knowledge will always empower those further than those without knowledge.

Comment by colesantiago 21 hours ago

> Do you count any use of LLMs, including highly reviewed and controlled use as "slop"?

Yes.

To quote the repository:

"slop: Anything generated by AI, typically code, books, articles, or images."

If you are reviewing AI generated code, you are already reviewing slop which is a lose-lose situation.

Comment by 21 hours ago

Comment by Philpax 21 hours ago

I wish you luck on your quest to avoid all of the software on that list.

Comment by cnqso 20 hours ago

Good luck!

Comment by dividedcomet 21 hours ago

I mean yeah, I have 2 kids under 1. So I wasn’t gonna spend the 100+ hours doing it all by hand. The project either gets made using AI or not at all.

Comment by CamperBob2 21 hours ago

Looks like another unreadable black hole of nothingness. God, I wish this trend would hurry up and run its course.

Comment by rschiavone 21 hours ago

Unfortunately the trend is only accelerating

Comment by dividedcomet 21 hours ago

there are other themes, the one shown is just extending my terminal theme so it doesn’t feel out of place.

Comment by spiderice 21 hours ago

Ironically, I understand what the "unreadable black hole of nothingness" is perfectly. But I have no idea what your comment means.

Comment by 0gs 21 hours ago

hard to argue that the UBHON is a recurring theme these days! rimshot

Comment by nosioptar 21 hours ago

In what way is it "beautiful"?

To me, it's just yet another bland low-contrast dark mode interface.

Also, vim has mouse support. Probably shouldn't use a clanker to write your readme if you're not going to take the time to do a basic fact check.

Comment by dividedcomet 20 hours ago

That’s just the theme matching the terminal, there are two others out of the box but I prefer the system theme. And by beautiful I mean it has a cohesive system design and theming. I prefer to to another VsCode clone

Comment by gslepak 20 hours ago

So glad to see this! This is exactly what we need! Love this!

I wrote this article a while back on how to build a great terminal editor that's better than Emacs and VIM [1], you might find it interesting!

[1] https://gist.github.com/taoeffect/086220456e736cceb30d68834d...

Comment by iLemming 16 hours ago

> We need something like Emacs, but a well designed Emacs.

Wow. This is brilliant. Nobody ever. Not once. Not even theoretically. Nobody in 50 years of Emacs' existence ever tried that. Not a single programmer ever said this or attempted to do this. With exception of insignificant fools such as XEmacs, Zmacs, Hemlock, Climacs, Edwin, JEmacs, Yi, Lem, Guile Emacs, Remacs, emacs-ng, and the eleven thousand config frameworks that were going to fix it from the inside. I salute your effort, and may the spirit of your burned tokens please the digital gods and may they accept your sacrifice. Godspeed.

Comment by gslepak 16 hours ago

I recommend reading the link.

Comment by iLemming 15 hours ago

Buddy, I did. I did. And I can rant for a quite a while for why the opinions there have jack squat of sound reasoning. On [almost] every single point there.

What I love about Vim and Emacs is that they taught me humility. I am grateful to my younger self for forcing me to learn them, deeply. They cut my enormously inflated hubris down to size, and I believe they made me not only a better programmer but a better person. I won't tell you to try that path, because that would sound patronizing, and would undo this entire paragraph.