Transcription

The time has come. After using WARP for over a month, the question is, is it better than FIG? Well, let's find out. First of all, they're not the same thing. WARP claims to be a terminal, while FIG uses the words command line. Why? Because WARP is actually an entire terminal that runs on your system, while FIG is a plugin that works on top of your existing and favorite terminal. So what are the pros and cons of these two different approaches? Well, WARP, being an entire terminal, an actual app, is able to have more UI customization and interactions with the user, while FIG, being a plugin on top of existing terminal, has maybe less UI capabilities, but indeed it runs in your favorite terminal, which is probably faster in the onboarding process. Let's address the elephant in the room, artificial intelligence. On FIG, all you have to do is type FIG AI and then your query. For example, zip all and the files in this folder. In a second, it will generate a script, and you can either execute the command or edit, regenerate. So these are the options. I can type edit, and this will put the command in my prompt, so that I can change it as much as I want. On WARP, it's pretty much the same, but with the hash character. As you can see here, this will open the AI command search. So once again, zip all and the files in this folder, and again, in a second, I will get pretty much the same command. From here, I can either input the command and it's there, so I can edit right before running it, or if I go back, I can ask WARP to explain how it works. This will open a side menu where I can in fact ask the WARP AI if it can explain the command to me. And this will, again in a second, generate a quick explanation on what this command is about to do. And here, I can also ask for further explanations. One more hot topic is indeed the pricing. We can go on the respective pages and compare them a little bit. So they're both free. They start with a free plan, both FIG and WARP. And if you want to work in a team, FIG has a $12 per user per month, while WARP says to be decided. I think you might want to contact them to get a quote, while FIG has custom pricing for enterprise, and same does WARP. Both tools have a long list of amazing features. Today, we're going to see some of them. For example, Autocomplete, AI, and Custom Teams, which are available on both. And then for FIG, we're going to see the custom scripts, the full IDE integration, and the .files management. While for WARP, we're going to see the command palette, the blocks, multitabs, and the user-friendly input. So let's jump in it. First thing we're going to see is Autocomplete. I think this key feature is something every app, tool, extension, whatever works on terminal must have. It actually helped me so much, so let me show you how it works. On WARP, as soon as I type cd, I will already see something here highlighted in grey, but if I also hit tab, it will open this dropdown I can navigate with my keyboard. On FIG, I can type cd, and after hitting space, it will already open this window here, where I can see all the folders and the subfolders they contain. A difference I just noticed is that WARP didn't show me the hidden folders, while FIG actually does. Anyway, the most common usage I have for Autocomplete is as usual with git. I can type git here, and WARP will also read my addresses, but I think FIG does the same. By some criteria, I don't know. It suggests push first, while WARP just goes straight into alphabetical order. For example, here I can try to use an alias, and something I use quite often is git back. I can start typing, and if I hit enter, I will get my alias here in the prompt. On FIG, pretty much the same thing, if I type git back, they actually both show me what the alias stands for. Like I said, both tools have AI integrated, we just seen them a few seconds ago, so I will not talk about that again. Let's talk about the third common feature that is themes. From WARP, you can select the themes from the common palette, I will talk about that later, and from here, I can select all the themes I got here in the list. On FIG instead, there is no way to directly customize it from the terminal, but I can just type FIG, and it will open the FIG dashboard. From here, from the settings, autocomplete, and appearance, you can see I can actually change the theme I want. For example, if I pick Groovebox, I can already see here that the theme has changed. In any case, if you want to further personalize some themes, you can see that both projects have their official themes repository, where you can actually create a theme, suggest a new one, so that they're available for everyone. Something cool on WARP is this WarpThemes project, where you can actually create a theme on the fly, you can change whatever you want here, and this will, okay, this is more visible, and when you're done, you can download the selected theme and directly apply it to WARP. Well, maybe I should not use one with the red background anyway. And now, let's start looking at the features that are only on one of the two tools, and we will begin with FIG. Something super cool is the scripts feature. You can find some scripts on the script store, and you can install your local ones. In order to use the script to install, just type fig run, and again, the drop-down will let you select from the ones you currently have installed. One more cool feature, which you can find only on FIG and not on WARP, is the full IDE integration. For example, FIG will work directly inside my VS Code instance, because it's just a plugin working on top of ZSH, while for WARP, being it an actual terminal, you cannot just do that, or at least not that easily. The third feature I want to highlight about FIG is .files. To be fair, I'm not using them yet, but I think I should probably start at some point, as here you can group all your .files with, for example, variables, your paths, secrets, so that you can have all of them in one single place. And now, let's start talking about the WARP-specific feature. And first of all, there's also highlighted here, you can use the common palette. This is something you're probably already used to if you have a Mac, because you have your common palette. By the way, in case you didn't know, the common palette is also available on GitHub with command K. Anyway, let's get back to WARP. From here, you can either select an option with your arrows, or you can, for example, type something here. The next cool feature about WARP, and I really think this is amazing, is the blocks feature. So, what is a block? Well, a block is a single section of output in the terminal, where you can see your input, your output, and you can scroll through it. For example, if I type git status here, you can see that if I scroll, I move the scroll bar, pmpm install will remain on top, so that if the output of the log is quite long, you can always see what the command was in first place. What else you can do with blocks? Well, first of all, you can click here on the menu on the right, and you can create a permalink. Why do you need a link? Well, you can share an entire block with everyone in your team or on the internet, as this will just create a link you can share to your colleagues, and they can see the output of your console directly in their browser. Something else I would probably expect from a tool like this one, is being able to have multiple tabs. Well, this is something you probably cannot just do on Fig, because it's a plugin on top of the terminal. So, if you want multiple tabs, you have to use a terminal which actually supports this feature. Last but not least, warp uses a proper input text in their terminal. For example, if you want to change something here, you might want to skip through all the text, and you can only use the arrows, but on warp, I can just click here and type something here. And that's not the only thing you can do, because you can also go multiline. You can add another command there, and when you run, you will see the first command and the second one right after. And by the way, you can see here how useful is the block feature we just saw. Oh, by the way, if for whatever reason you have a multiline command, well, you can also have multiple cursors. Isn't that cool? You know, I personally like open source, and I'm happy to see that both projects are somehow involved. For example, warp has, as we already seen, the teams repository, but also have a workflows repository, which are the workflows you can find already in the tool, and you can access them from the command palette. And also, those scripts are available on commands.dev. It is a spin-off project from warp, where all those commands are listed. Speaking of fig, they also have an organization on GitHub with some popular repositories. For example, other than the teams we already said, they have the entire autocomplete repository here available. And in case you have some suggestions or things to add in the autocomplete for everyone, well, you can do that directly on the GitHub repository. Cool, but how can I go in depth with specific features of either tool? Well, let's have a look at both documentation of warp and fig. They both welcome you on the homepage with a nice video. Fig has a welcome to fig intro video, and warp has the 2023 update video here in the homepage. Like pretty much all documentation websites, you can have a left menu here with all the options. They're grouped by appearance, features, and how does warp compare help for warp. And on fig, similarly, you can see an overview, products, debugging, and other. Both tools go pretty much in depth about their features, and they also have some explanations and videos warp does really good on that, so that you can also see the features live right before testing them in your computer. One more aspect to keep into consideration when deciding which tool to use might also be the community. Yes, because if a tool has a large community, it's probably easier to find guides, articles, and even help about some problems you might face. And I have to say, both tools are doing quite good in communities. They both have active discourse servers, Twitter accounts, they both have a TikTok account where they share tips and tricks and funny videos about themselves. Yeah, they both have good communities where you can interact and learn more about their tools. By the way, while editing the video, I noticed I actually didn't mention all aspects I wanted to, but luckily I also wrote a blog post, you can find the link here in the description, where I better go into detail, and I talk about even more topics in this fig versus warp comparison. So if you're interested, you might want to have a look. In conclusion, we're looking at two different tools. Warp is a terminal with some more UI features and you can interact more with it, while fig gives you a nice touch to your existing terminal, so maybe slightly less feature, but slightly more integrated. So what is the best tool? Well, guess what? It depends. It highly depends on how you're used to work with the terminal. For example, if you must have the terminal in VS Code, you might think that fig is probably the better choice for you, as you can find it integrated in your terminal. But if you use a terminal a lot and you want it in a separate window so that you can have multiple tabs, you can have many more features, well, maybe warp is a better option for you in that case. Or at least this is probably a criteria I will strictly follow, but it's entirely up to you. They're both doing really great and I'm so happy I found both of them, so that I can try to take the best of both worlds. For example, on VS Code, I like to use fig to have the autocomplete, but if I have to do something more complicated, let's say some more terminal intensive operations, I like to open warp so that I can feel I have more control on what I'm doing. In conclusion, what works best for you? Well, you're the only one who knows the answer. I hope with this video I gave you some more details about the two tools so that you can better decide which one fits best for you. Let me know in the comments which tool are you using, and with that said, thanks for watching this video and see you in the next one!