My Personal tmux Mystery

Roll in enough Vim circles and you'll hear people sing the praises of tmux, the terminal multiplexer. And to be honest... I've never really quite gotten it.

I tried it and didn't get why it was great. Recently, Adam Stacoviak from the Changelog mirrored my thoughts in this short clip:

The selling points that Nick and Jared make for tmux actually made me realize why it's never quite fit for me. Their two main points:

1. tmux sessions are a great way to manage projects and window arrangements.
2. tmux allows persistent processes over an SSH connection.

It made me realize that my normal workflow differs from what they describe. Which made me start to wonder, "Am I the outlier here?"

So here's a quick overview of how my workflow differs.

1. I don't use complex window arrangements and have other ways to manage projects.
2. (The big one) Most of my development is local-only.

Projects and Window Arrangement #

To open up a project I:

1. Open up WezTerm
2. Type the shortcut saved from my bashmarks script
3. Open nvim
4. Use the amazing Telescope plugin to pull up any files I need.
5. Start coding.

Once I'm in the project I typically work with a single full-screen window. I use lots of window splits to compare files, put them side by side, keep one open as a reference, or whatever ... but that's all internal to NeoVim. I manage my git history through the Fugitive plugin. If I need to run a quick command I have a floating terminal bound to a function key that I can quickly bring up and dismiss without leaving NeoVim. Once I'm IN NeoVim, I don't need to leave it.

Adam jokingly (seriously?) says halfway through the video, "What's wrong with multiple tabs?" And ... 😳 ... that's EXACTLY what I do when I need to run a separate process in the background, I kick open a new tab on WezTerm and then leave it running. Need to fire off a container that's not detached? Open a new tab. Need to run my local node-based wiki in the background? Open a new tab and fire off the process.

The tabs act as my expander and window management. Because I start fresh each time with a simple arrangement, I don't need to save the session and the project. I just need to get there in the command line and open NeoVim.

I realize many people don't work in this one-window-at-a-time-in-fullscreen mode like I do. If there was a lot of setup or tear down between projects I could see sessions being useful, I just don't think it will help me much.

Local Only Development #

This is the main reason of that makes tmux not a real boost for me — I simply don't often work through an SSH connection.

Most of my development work happens on a local checkout of a project, running on local containers. Occasionally I'll need to SSH into something and run a few commands, but typically they're relatively minor and quick — I've never had a command disconnect on me.

IF I did more work on remote boxes I could see this being a critical part, but it's simply not a large part of my workflow.

So I'm not crazy, I'm just not who tmux is for.