Fresh: a modern tribute to 90s IDE

Fresh, the new editor, feels like a modern tribute to my 1995 Borland C++ text-mode IDE. That old tool wasn't just a plain text editor; it was a rich text-user interface (TUI) with multiple windows, syntax-highlighted panes, and color support. In an era when RAM cost $50 per megabyte and GUI editors were still limited, the Borland IDE offered a sophisticated, multi-window environment that let programmers write mutli-file code, compile, or view the stack all within a color text mode terminal interface.

Borland C++ 1995

Fresh brings this lost era back to life.

Fresh editor

Back when the web first arrived, pages were simple, static, and far less capable than today's web apps. But it was clearly the future.

Elegant TUI applications were replaced with clunky web based forms. The experience was backward, but it forced us to think about design and minimalism again. Desktop software kept advancing, but the commercial TUI applications disappeared and stopped evolving. Now web applications match desktop software in power but the cli based tools did not really change much from their simpe unix roots. There was not much interest in keeping rich TUI alive, with a few exceptions, such as the venerable 'Midnight Commander' TUI file browser.

Fresh finally brings that TUI magic back again, offering a clean, distraction-free interface that rivals my old Borland C++ editor in speed, while adding modern features like Git integration, and customizable themes.

If you miss the old days of rich TUI editing, with full mouse support in your terminal, Fresh gives you that power again. It's a reminder that good ideas endure, even if they take a nap for a few decades.

Fresh editor

Check it out: https://getfresh.dev/