Follow up on my month using (mostly) only CLI tools
A month of using only CLI/TUI tools for everything was mostly a success
In November, I experimented with using only CLI tools. How did it go?
I’d give it a 7 out of 10.
The big winner for me was jrnl. I’ve always been impressed by people who could make use of OBTF (One Big Text File) but it’s never been something I could come to terms with. Once I got the hang of using jrnl, I’m kind of all in with OBTF, at least when it comes to daily logging. Now that I’ve created a few handy shell aliases around jrnl, It’s taken over the role of Daily Notes that I used to put into (several) other apps.
The other two CLI-based productivity tools I used for the month were Taskwarrior and nb. Taskwarrior is very good at managing tasks, but I don’t know if it’ll stick as my main task app. There’s too much typing involved with keeping things updated (adding tags, projects, etc.). The TUI helps, but I’m not sure it’s enough. I’m currently tinkering with Super Productivity as more GUI-ified option, but I’ll probably just end up back in Emacs org-mode like I always do.
I’m still exploring nb. It’s surprisingly deep and capable, and I’ll miss it if I stop using it.
I don’t know what I’ll use nb for, exactly. It’s not like I don’t have too many places to keep stuff already. Still, it’s neat and handy. The downside is that typing the entry ID gets tedious: e.g. nb edit 157. Another issue is that when there are thousands of files, listings can get pretty slow. For example, in my “kb” notebook, searches can take 10 seconds or longer to return all results. I’m enamoured of it, though, so I’m keeping it around for now.
For email, I’m still using aerc for quickly checking messages. I alternate between aerc and the Fastmail web UI. Both are fine, but I’m surprised by how much I miss Apple Mail on macOS.
The thing that puts me off sticking all CLI, all the time is that sometimes I just want to kick back and drive with the mouse for a while. Being forced to use a keyboard for everything puts me off after a while. I’m happy to be wrapping up the experiment, but I’m hanging on to the CLI tools I’ve learned to enjoy using.