Terminal Lucidity: Envisioning the Future of the Terminal
The Unix terminal, or just simply, the terminal, can be found being applied in almost every facet of computing. It is available across all major platforms and often integrated into other applications. Due to its ubiquity, even marginal improvements to the terminal have the potential to make massive improvements to productivity on a global scale. We believe that evolutionary improvements to the terminal, in its current incarnation as windowed terminal emulator, are possible and that developing a thorough understanding of issues that current terminal users face is fundamental to knowing how the terminal should evolve. In order to develop that understanding we have mined Unix and Linux Stack Exchange using a fully-reproducible method which was able to extract and categorize 91.0% of 1,489 terminal-related questions (from the full set of nearly 240,000 questions) without manual intervention.
We present an analysis, to our knowledge the first of its kind, of windowed terminal-related questions posted over a 15-year period and viewed, in aggregate, approximately 40 million times. As expected, given its longevity, we find the terminal’s many features being applied across a wide variety of use cases. We find evidence that the terminal, as windowed terminal emulator, has neither fully adapted to its now current graphical environment nor completely untangled itself from features more suited to incarnations in previous environments. We also find evidence of areas where we believe the terminal could be extended along with other areas where it could be simplified. Surprisingly, while many current efforts to improve the terminal include improving the terminal’s social and collaborative aspects, we find little evidence of this as a prominent pain point.
Mon 28 AprDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
11:00 - 12:30 | Empirical Findings, Future Visions, Recommendations Replications and Negative Results (RENE) / Early Research Achievements (ERA) / Tool Demonstration / Research Track at 205 Chair(s): Mark Hills Appalachian State University, Coen De Roover Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Gema Rodríguez-Pérez University of British Columbia (UBC) | ||
11:00 10mTalk | Terminal Lucidity: Envisioning the Future of the Terminal Research Track | ||
11:10 6mTalk | Exploring Code Comprehension in Scientific Programming: Preliminary Insights from Research Scientists Early Research Achievements (ERA) Alyssia Chen University of Hawaii at Manoa, Carol Wong University of Hawaii at Manoa, Bonita Sharif University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, Anthony Peruma University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa | ||
11:16 10mTalk | Method Names in Jupyter Notebooks: An Exploratory Study Research Track Carol Wong University of Hawaii at Manoa, Gunnar Larsen University of Hawaii at Manoa, Rocky Huang University of Hawaii at Manoa, Bonita Sharif University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, Anthony Peruma University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa | ||
11:26 6mTalk | SCALAR: A Part-of-speech Tagger for Identifiers Tool Demonstration Christian Newman , Brandon Scholten Kent State University, Sophia Testa Kent State University, Joshua Behler Kent State University, Syreen Banabilah Kent State University, Michael L. Collard The University of Akron, Michael J. Decker Bowling Green State University, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer University of Michigan - Flint, Marcos Zampieri George mason University, Eman Abdullah AlOmar Stevens Institute of Technology, USA, Reem Alsuhaibani Prince Sultan University, Anthony Peruma University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Jonathan I. Maletic Kent State University | ||
11:32 6mTalk | How do Papers Make into Machine Learning Frameworks: A Preliminary Study on TensorFlow Early Research Achievements (ERA) Federica Pepe University of Sannio, Claudia Farkas York University, Maleknaz Nayebi York University, Giulio Antoniol Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Massimiliano Di Penta University of Sannio, Italy | ||
11:38 4mTalk | Toward Neurosymbolic Program Comprehension Early Research Achievements (ERA) Alejandro Velasco William & Mary, Aya Garryyeva William and Mary, David Nader Palacio William & Mary, Antonio Mastropaolo William and Mary, USA, Denys Poshyvanyk William & Mary Pre-print | ||
11:42 10mTalk | Combining Static Analysis Techniques for Program Comprehension Using Slicito Tool Demonstration Pre-print | ||
11:52 6mTalk | Mining Code Change Patterns in Ada Projects Replications and Negative Results (RENE) | ||
11:58 6mTalk | Telling Software Evolution Stories With Sonification Early Research Achievements (ERA) | ||
12:04 10mTalk | Attributed Multiplex Learning for Analogical Third-Party Library Recommendation and Retrieval Research Track Baihui Sang State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Liang Wang Nanjing University, Jierui Zhang Nanjing University, Xianping Tao Nanjing University | ||
12:14 6mTalk | LLM2FedLLM - A Tool for Simulating Federated LLMs for Software Engineering Tasks Tool Demonstration Jahnavi Kumar Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India, Siddhartha Gandu Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, Sridhar Chimalakonda Indian Institute of Technology, Tirupati | ||
12:20 10mLive Q&A | Session's Discussion: "Empirical Findings, Future Visions, Recommendations" Research Track | ||