DEV Community

Pontakorn Paesaeng
Pontakorn Paesaeng

Posted on

Do you use built-in terminal or terminal emulator?

I just want to have a friendly discussion why someone use built-in terminal (VSCode Terminal, Intellij Terminal) or terminal emulator (Kitty, iTerm2, Terminal).

I personally use built-in terminal more because it's more convenient for me.

Top comments (2)

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

I use a separate terminal emulator because, well, I do most things in the terminal. I don't have a need for an IDE which exceeds my need for a terminal and text editor right now.

If I was a Java programmer then that might be different, for example, but I'm not.

I use tmux because I like -

  • being full-screen or at least maximised vertically
  • being able to split it into panes
  • organising it into separate projects/task spaces
  • able to pick up a session where I left off, even on a remote system

Mostly, I just like having the space to do things rather than be in a little window inside an editor. It feels a bit wrong to use that little window to do anything outside the scope of the project I'm in, anyway.

Collapse
 
pontakornth profile image
Pontakorn Paesaeng

I usually use built-in terminal because I just need to run npm run dev and nothing else right now. After this year, I might consider using terminal emulator because I may need space for data structure and algorithm homework.