Why is the terminal input so weird?

The post discusses the difficulties in editing terminal-based input, which seems stuck in the 80s. It highlights issues such as mouse accessibility and multi-line editing, making it less powerful than a typical <textarea> element on a web page or an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The main reason for this archaic nature is the technical architecture of the terminal, which makes it hard to implement rich editing features. The traditional REPL model used by shells further limits its capabilities. Warp, a Rust-based terminal, has started re-architecting terminal input to work more like an IDE, with challenges such as building a text editor from scratch and reimplementing functionality provided by many shells.