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We need more zero config tools

· Frankfurt, Germany · HN, Lobsters

It just works. — Steve Jobs

If you follow this blog, you’ll know that I’m doing a series called “Emacs Config From Scratch”1. Emacs is an editor operating system, where you can configure and customize literally everything. I like that you can truly make it yours, but it’s a lot of work to get there.

Recently, I’ve become fond of (command line) tools that just work, out of the box2. This blogpost is an ode to them.

Fish

Julia Evans recently posted Reasons I still love the fish shell, and the first point she makes is “no configuration”.

Things that require plugins and lots of code in shells like ZSH, like autosuggestions, are included and configured by default in fish. At the time of writing this, my fish config has less than 31 loc, most of which are abbreviations.

I have two fish plugins configured: z for jumping to a directory, and hydro as my shell prompt. Neither need configuration.

Helix

My Neovim config had 21 external plugins. Making LSP, tree-sitter and formatting work took a while (LSP alone needs 3 plugins) and in the end there were still things that didn’t work.

I’ve switched to Helix, which can do so much out of the box, here’s a non-exhaustive list:

  • LSP (including autocompletion, show signature, go to definition, show references, etc.) just works
  • Tree-sitter is built in, you can even do selections on tree-sitter objects
  • A file picker and global search
  • Pressing a key in normal mode shows subsequent keys you can press, and what they do
  • You can jump to any visible word, add/remove/replace quotes or other characters
  • … and so much more

The config for the code editor I use all day is 5 loc. Here it is:

theme = "kanagawa"

[editor]
line-number = "relative"
cursorline = true
rulers = [80]

I will say that it takes some getting used to as it folows the selection -> action model, i.e. you need to run wd instead of dw to delete the next word.

Lazygit

After raving about Magit in London, my team showed me Lazygit and I’ve been using it ever since—it’s really good and it does exactly what you want it to do, without configuration3.

You can toggle different screen modes, panes adjust in size when active and pretty much everything you want to do is only a few keystrokes away.

Zellij

A batteries-included Tmux alternative, Zellij doesn’t need any configuration to work well. You can set up Layouts without additional plugins (although there is a plugin system) and I’m generally not missing anything from my Tmux configuration.

My favorite feature is the floating panes. Press Ctrl + p, w to toggle a pane floating on top of everything else—I often use this for Lazygit.

What else?

Here are some tools you have sent me that are zero/minimal config:

  • Matthew shared Broot, a new way to see and navigate directory trees
  • Ilija shared k9s, a CLI to maange Kubernetes clusters
  • Alexander shared Orbiton, a text editor they built

Do you have a tool that requires no (or minimal) configuration? Send me an email and I’ll add it to the list!

And if you’re building something, please strive to make the default experience work really well for most people.

  1. Check it out ↩

  2. I’m starting to feel the same about programming languages and external dependencies, but that’s a different post. ↩

  3. You can configure almost everything—but you don’t need to. ↩