I get a weird kick out of SSH. There's something about it that feels magical - you're controlling another computer, it's like you're there!

Now, controlling a remote computer is not exactly unusual, we do this all the time on the internet, but it doesn't have the same feeling to it. Websites still feel like they're on your device, or they feel like a view into another device, even if they allow you to control remote machines to a large degree.

But SSH truly feels like you're there. One could maybe feel similar when using remote desktop or X11 forwarding but that's usually too sluggish and something about that just breaks the feeling.

With SSH, you feel like you're in the target computer, with same powers as a user using it directly. And that feels magical. I could be just at home, but simultaneously "be in the computer" at the office at my desk, which would sit there next to my unsuspecting coworker. It's a bit like in the Matrix, where characters just sit on a chair, while doing all sorts of actions in the system.

While we are at movie analogies, SSH gets even more exciting when you do inceptions. I sometimes had to remotely connect to the office through VPN, develop on a machine at my office desk and then to run some tests, I had to SSH from that machine to another server on a second network in the office. Coordinating those two machines in the office and sending data between them from my home feels pretty powerful.

Today I realized I can SSH into an old MacBook that I use as a build machine and even when it's just sitting on my desk next to me, it still feels magical to run the build on it from my main machine. Doubly so here because that MacBook GUI is crazy slow, so controlling it through SSH somehow feels more real than using it directly.