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> It's terrible to script I'm pretty sure you didn't try PowerShell. It is at least as good as bash, if not better. > you need to use the mouse too much I fi

> It's terrible to script I'm pretty sure you didn't try PowerShell. It is at least as good as bash, if not better. > you need to use the mouse too much I find this more problematic on macOS. I was forced to use a mouse much more on macOS. It doesn't even allow me to press the yes/no dialog only using a keyboard. On Windows nearly every item has a shortcut, sometimes even better than GNOME (but worse than KDE, IMO).

tachion 10y ago
It does, you simply need to change a default configuration for keyboard shortcuts to be able to jump over UI elements with keyboard only.
- yokohummer7 10y ago
  :( Why is it not the default? Is there a technical reason? I cannot think of any possible downside that the shortcuts would bring.
- haxxorfreak 10y ago
  Control + F7 (Fn + Ctrl + F7 if you're on a MBP or using the wireless keyboard) Toggles on highlighting for all UI elements so you can Tab / Shift-Tab through them. It's usually the first thing I do when I touch a new Mac.
intoverflow2 10y ago
> It doesn't even allow me to press the yes/no dialog only using a keyboard cmd+first letter of the dialog option. I actually find OS X far superior with shortcuts than Windows: More discoverable, actually configurable and more consistent. One of the only things I miss now I've switched to Win.
- eppsilon 10y ago
  For me one of the joys of using macOS is when you realize adding option or shift to a shortcut does a similar but more specialized thing that is more useful. In Windows the shortcuts have always seemed less logical to me, though the newer Windows key ones are an improvement.
Operyl 10y ago
I've yet to figure out what PowerShell can/can't do though really. Maybe I'm weird, but I like that it's bash on OS X, I already know it.
- yokohummer7 10y ago
  You're not weird. PowerShell does have barriers to entry and that's why I also had used Cygwin on Windows until recently. And it might not change because it is a very different monster than POSIX. It is unfortunate for sure, but still I think it's worth learning especially if you use Windows frequently. Even if you don't, learning it is a fun experience. It's like learning Haskell just to feel another way to program, even though you're not using it in practice.
  - Operyl 10y ago
    Eh, it's just so .. nuts looking to me that I'll probably stick to *nix land.
Karunamon 10y ago
Powershell might have some neat features, but the verbosity of the commands (don't bring up shortcuts here either - you need the full commands as that's what everyone else is using) just drives me batty. I find that they don't lend themselves well to mnemonics or easy memorization. Who needs ls when you have Get-ChildItem? Who needs grep -r 'pattern' when you have Select-String -Path c:\ -Pattern pattern? Now that I think about it, Powershell has a conceptual similarity to Applescript. A proprietary, verbose, and hard-to-discover English-like syntax belying a great amount of power over the target platform.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  Microsoft might have gone a little far on the whole "code is meant to be read first" thing, but the verbosity does make it immediately obvious what every line in your history does.
mort96 10y ago
I find it hard to take powershell seriously, considering last time I tried using it for anything, I just wanted to quickly download something over http. Looked for something like 'wget <URL>' online, the only results I found was something like multiple verbose lines of instantiating an http client and calling methods on it. That's fine for a programming language, completely horrible for an everyday shell, from the perspective of someone who generally only uses Firefox and a terminal emulator in Linux. After some googling just now, it seems like there's now an Invoke-WebRequest command, but that too looks like a hell of a lot of typing compared to Linux shells. There's also the fact that lots of stuff in windows wasn't designed to be accessible through the cli. You can't, for example, make a powershell script to toggle an audio output device on and off, as that's only available through the GUI.
- yokohummer7 10y ago
  > the only results I found was something like multiple verbose lines of instantiating an http client and calling methods on it. I blame the documentation. Not the official documentation (they're not excellent, but OK), but various outdated resources residing in many blogs and sites, including Stack Overflow. I mean, what's wrong with iwr REMOTE_URL -o LOCAL_FILENAME ? The situation this command wasn't searchable by you is unfortunate, possibly because PowerShell has come a long way since its introduction in 2006 and it is hard to remove the outdated resources online. But for those who know what features/commands are available in PowerShell, finding them isn't particularly difficult. > There's also the fact that lots of stuff in windows wasn't designed to be accessible through the cli. You can't, for example, make a powershell script to toggle an audio output device on and off This is just one example. On the other hand, I found nearly every thing I had done using GUI could be replaced by a few lines of PowerShell code. Actually automating my day-to-day GUI operations was my way to learn PowerShell, and mostly it worked great. Microsoft is adding tons of commands each release to expose more system functionalities. There are exceptions of course, but "lots of stuff" is a bit exaggerated.

tachion 10y ago

It does, you simply need to change a default configuration for keyboard shortcuts to be able to jump over UI elements with keyboard only.

yokohummer7 10y ago
:( Why is it not the default? Is there a technical reason? I cannot think of any possible downside that the shortcuts would bring.
haxxorfreak 10y ago
Control + F7 (Fn + Ctrl + F7 if you're on a MBP or using the wireless keyboard) Toggles on highlighting for all UI elements so you can Tab / Shift-Tab through them. It's usually the first thing I do when I touch a new Mac.

intoverflow2 10y ago

> It doesn't even allow me to press the yes/no dialog only using a keyboard cmd+first letter of the dialog option. I actually find OS X far superior with shortcuts than Windows: More discoverable, actually configurable and more consistent. One of the only things I miss now I've switched to Win.

eppsilon 10y ago
For me one of the joys of using macOS is when you realize adding option or shift to a shortcut does a similar but more specialized thing that is more useful. In Windows the shortcuts have always seemed less logical to me, though the newer Windows key ones are an improvement.

Operyl 10y ago

I've yet to figure out what PowerShell can/can't do though really. Maybe I'm weird, but I like that it's bash on OS X, I already know it.

yokohummer7 10y ago
You're not weird. PowerShell does have barriers to entry and that's why I also had used Cygwin on Windows until recently. And it might not change because it is a very different monster than POSIX. It is unfortunate for sure, but still I think it's worth learning especially if you use Windows frequently. Even if you don't, learning it is a fun experience. It's like learning Haskell just to feel another way to program, even though you're not using it in practice.
- Operyl 10y ago
  Eh, it's just so .. nuts looking to me that I'll probably stick to *nix land.

Karunamon 10y ago

Powershell might have some neat features, but the verbosity of the commands (don't bring up shortcuts here either - you need the full commands as that's what everyone else is using) just drives me batty. I find that they don't lend themselves well to mnemonics or easy memorization. Who needs ls when you have Get-ChildItem? Who needs grep -r 'pattern' when you have Select-String -Path c:\ -Pattern pattern? Now that I think about it, Powershell has a conceptual similarity to Applescript. A proprietary, verbose, and hard-to-discover English-like syntax belying a great amount of power over the target platform.

Godel_unicode 10y ago
Microsoft might have gone a little far on the whole "code is meant to be read first" thing, but the verbosity does make it immediately obvious what every line in your history does.

mort96 10y ago

I find it hard to take powershell seriously, considering last time I tried using it for anything, I just wanted to quickly download something over http. Looked for something like 'wget <URL>' online, the only results I found was something like multiple verbose lines of instantiating an http client and calling methods on it. That's fine for a programming language, completely horrible for an everyday shell, from the perspective of someone who generally only uses Firefox and a terminal emulator in Linux. After some googling just now, it seems like there's now an Invoke-WebRequest command, but that too looks like a hell of a lot of typing compared to Linux shells. There's also the fact that lots of stuff in windows wasn't designed to be accessible through the cli. You can't, for example, make a powershell script to toggle an audio output device on and off, as that's only available through the GUI.

yokohummer7 10y ago
> the only results I found was something like multiple verbose lines of instantiating an http client and calling methods on it. I blame the documentation. Not the official documentation (they're not excellent, but OK), but various outdated resources residing in many blogs and sites, including Stack Overflow. I mean, what's wrong with iwr REMOTE_URL -o LOCAL_FILENAME ? The situation this command wasn't searchable by you is unfortunate, possibly because PowerShell has come a long way since its introduction in 2006 and it is hard to remove the outdated resources online. But for those who know what features/commands are available in PowerShell, finding them isn't particularly difficult. > There's also the fact that lots of stuff in windows wasn't designed to be accessible through the cli. You can't, for example, make a powershell script to toggle an audio output device on and off This is just one example. On the other hand, I found nearly every thing I had done using GUI could be replaced by a few lines of PowerShell code. Actually automating my day-to-day GUI operations was my way to learn PowerShell, and mostly it worked great. Microsoft is adding tons of commands each release to expose more system functionalities. There are exceptions of course, but "lots of stuff" is a bit exaggerated.