It's GNU Readline[0] or similar. It's all over the place, on Linux at least. Being GNU it defaults to emacs, but the vi support is also excellent. The first thing I type in any foreign bash is 'set -o vi'.
I generally agree with you about UIs (if by shit you mean they've thrown away a ton of utility), but I don't think his video was bs, maybe just moved too far from it's original context.
DB engine appears to be sqlite. It's in the tags on the main page and there's a file full of sql to create what looks like a sample db in the data/ dir.
Choosing to name variables with a single character has nothing to do with syntax. At most it could be considered idiomatic, but there's no reason to slavishly follow every idiomatic choice, just as there isn't in natural language.
I appreciate your write-up, it was well done. How long did you spend on this? I'd be most interested to know how long, not counting writing the blog post.
I think I just responded too hastily. I am working in Go. There is file IO going on in addition to the calculation (which because of a NAS or whatever could also be network IO). As a practical matter I had never felt the need to offer cancellation or timeout for these use cases, but I probably should, so mea culpa.
This isn't true. I have use cases that don't require cancellations or timeout. The tasks I'm running don't involve the network, they either succeed or error after an expensive calculation.
To me this is proof that doing a good visualization is really an art. I saw this on hn for a couple hours, but really didn't think much of it. As soon as I clicked through the funny names, and "continents" brought a smile to my face.
I guess my little project is too small to make it, but now I too aspire to join the great nation of Golandia.