Yeah there's also a terminal emulator built into VS Code, but it seems that every release they add a heap of features to it which I feel like are already present in existing emulators - feels like reinventing the wheel and I'm not sure about the benefits yet.

Besides of course ease in styling with css and hackability.

Hi, I build the terminal in VS Code and am a maintainer on xterm.js. There is some reinventing of the wheel happening but that's because xterm.js is the best option out there for building a terminal in a web context. As WorldMaker mentioned though, it's open source and a communal effort, so anyone can pick it up and build a terminal that runs in a browser or Electron with ease.

VS Code and Hyper both use the same upstream emulator library (xterm.js [1]), so at least a lot of the wheel "reinvention" in this space is a communal effort.

[1] https://xtermjs.org/

lol I saw that it said "built on Electron" and reflexively said "...EWW" out loud.

EDIT: people, I'm not saying Electron is gross. I think it's awesome. I do however think it seems very off to use it to build a terminal.

sadly the vast majority of new projects these days seem to be done in nodeJS regardless of if javascript is a good choice for the project or not, and if it needs a desktop GUI that means electron.

:(