# Some terminal frustrations

DevFeed: [Some terminal frustrations](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/some-terminal-frustrations-21117.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://jvns.ca/blog/2025/02/05/some-terminal-frustrations/>)

Author: Julia Evans

Published: 2025-02-05T16:57:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Julia Evans](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/julia-evans.md>)

Topics: [Terminal](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/terminal.md>), [Command-line interface](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cli.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [Linux](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/linux.md>), [Mastodon](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mastodon.md>)

Tags: [bash](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bash.md>), [cli](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cli.md>), [linux](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/linux.md>), [shortcuts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/shortcuts.md>), [ssh](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ssh.md>), [switching](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/switching.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>), [terminal](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/terminal.md>), [vim](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/vim.md>)

## AI overview

The article analyzes responses from a terminal-use survey completed by 1,600 people. It groups common frustrations into difficulty remembering CLI syntax, redirects, and keyboard shortcuts; differences between operating systems, shells, editors, and command versions; and problems with SSH environments, servers, containers, and terminal colors. The author notes that most respondents were experienced terminal users and that the survey methodology was informal.

## Source excerpt

A few weeks ago I ran a terminal survey (you can read the results here) and at the end I asked: What's the most frustrating thing about using the terminal for you? 1600 people answered, and I decided to spend a few days categorizing all the responses. Along the way I learned that classifying qualitative data is not easy but I gave it my best shot. I ended up building a custom tool to make it faster to categorize everything. As with all of my surveys the methodology isn't particularly scientific. I just posted the survey to Mastodon and Twitter, ran it for a couple of days, and got answers from whoever happened to see it and felt like responding. Here are the top categories of frustrations! I think it's worth keeping in mind while reading these comments that 40% of people answering this survey have been using the terminal for 21+ years 95% of people answering the survey have been using the terminal for at least 4 years These comments aren't coming from total beginners. Here are the categories of frustrations! The number in brackets is the number of people with that frustration. I'm mostly writing this up for myself because I'm trying to write a zine about the terminal and I wanted to get a sense for what people are having trouble with. remembering syntax (115) People talked about struggles remembering: the syntax for CLI tools like awk, jq, sed, etc the syntax for redirects keyboard shortcuts for tmux, text editing, etc One example comment: There are just so many little "trivia" details to remember for full functionality. Even after all these years I'll sometimes forget where it's 2 or 1 for stderr, or forget which is which for > and >>. switching terminals is hard (91) People talked about struggling with switching systems (for example home/work computer or when SSHing) and running into: OS differences in keyboard shortcuts (like Linux vs Mac) systems which don't have their preferred text editor ("no vim" or "only vim") different versions of the same command (like Ma