5 ms·

This is a lot to take in. Not sure if you're the author, OP, but in case the author is reading: Where would you suggest someone starts? (Note: Don't answer here

This is a lot to take in. Not sure if you're the author, OP, but in case the author is reading: Where would you suggest someone starts? (Note: Don't answer here! Use your answer to shape the organization of information on the site!) For example, I use ZSH. Should I switch to fish? The list suggests I'd be sacrificing power and the ability to write scripts but gaining, uh, intelligence and user-friendliness? Is that true? Then there's a ton of stuff about customizing ZSH. I know that oh-my-zsh is the most popular but I did not find it especially performant so I never really looked in to using modular components of it. Now I know there are 50 other guides I could read? Maybe I want a plugin manager. antigen is a plugin manager, maybe it'll be more performant than oh-my-zsh? But what about antibody, which is "faster" and "simpler"? But zgen is "lightweight". Are weight and speed connected? What about weight and simplicity? Maybe I should switch to pure, which is "pretty, minimal, and fast". Then I moved on to my terminal. Currently I use iTerm 2, which "does amazing things". But maybe I should switch to Terminator, which is the "future of terminals". Or MacTerm, which is "powerful". Or Alacritty, which is GPU accelerated? (Isn't iTerm 2? I don't know?) I went to macOS package managers. I use homebrew because it's what every webpage for everything I want to install says. Should I get fink instead? Macport, I think is old, but it "simplifies the installation of software". I thought homebrew was pretty simple, but I guess it could be simpler? Then for text editors, I've never been good at emacs-fu, so I often use nano. Maybe I should replace with micro, which is "modern and intuitive"? Or jed, which is "freely available". I don't think I paid for nano, maybe I did. How does a curated list of Terminal frameworks, plugins, and resources differ from an uncurated one? Can the author give some example of a framework, plugin, or resource that was considered but not included because of the curation? I suspect the things that I know aren't included simply weren't considered to begin with. Maybe I'm wrong. Most of this criticism applies to every awesome list that gets linked, of course.

snazz 8y ago
There are only so many adjectives in circulation. More seriously: it’s hard to put together a list like this because so many things are subjective. Maybe you prefer fish because it gets rid of some of the dumb things required for a POSIX-compatible shell, but I prefer zsh because it has every feature and the kitchen sink. I don’t know, and neither does the person putting together the list.
- faho 8y ago
  It would be nice if the list explained that, though! And with the ~20 zsh "frameworks" and "plugin managers" here, they could really do some comparison, or probably even remove a couple. I'd rather they showed me 3 good options and explained the trade-off than 20 options with little commentary (the lines seem to be mostly cribbed from the projects themselves).
- notafraudster 8y ago
  I don't know how someone reading the list would understand that "fish ... gets rid of some of the dumb things [what things?] required for a POSIX-compatible [?] shell, but [others] prefer zsh because it has every feature [what features?] and the kitchen sink." For example, I didn't realize "smart" in the list's vernacular means "deprecates dumb legacy behaviour". Your post is the first time that became obvious to me. Now to figure out what that behaviour is and why I should care and if it impacts performance and and and... My post wasn't asking the curator to make decisions for me, it was asking them to help me make decisions.
nicoburns 8y ago
If you haven't tried micro then you should, it's a huge improvement over nano. For the rest, most people are going to want what you're already using: iterm2 + zsh + homebrew. Not the OP.
L_Rahman 8y ago
I've been developing an opinion lately that what we need is fewer roundups and "objective" reporting and more opinionated here's the end-to-end stack I use and I think is good and here are the tradeoffs. With a diversity of stacks and opinions, this represents most of the roads you can go down and lets you pick the person whose approach or philosophy most closely aligns with yours.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  https://usesthis.com/ https://usesthis.com/
  - L_Rahman 8y ago
    This is quite good. I wish it would go a little further and let them expound on why they settled on those choices, but I understand that's not the intention of that interview format.
tshanmu 8y ago
It does not matter...a computer is a tool to solve a problem. Just pick something and stick with it a bit....
okdana 8y ago
The problem with most of these lists and how-tos is that they're the CLI equivalent of 'I Fucking Love Science'. The people suggesting things like zsh frame-works rarely seem able to properly justify their use — they don't know what they actually do, nor what the alternative is, nor even whether you could accomplish the exact same thing in a less featureful shell like bash. It's just a cargo cult of people who don't really understand what they're doing writing Medium posts or whatever to evangelise unnecessary, badly written software to other people who don't really understand what they're doing. (In zsh's case, i think that's partly the project's own fault; it has very underwhelming defaults and a very overwhelming set-up process for new users.)
mr_toad 8y ago
Bash & Homebrew & Terminal app & Nano. It’s a local minima. There’s probably better alternatives, but I’d have to summon the energy to tunnel my way over the barrier.
rovr138 8y ago
Regarding Fish. A lot of people seem to complain about loosing the ability to write scripts that work on other shells because Fish breaks compatibility. Well, I’ve been using fish for a couple of years now and besides a couple of things that are very specific to my main computer, the rest of my scripts I build as POSIX as I can. I keep everything on a repo and I can then push/pull things on new machines and have everything available. One can still execute a `/bin/sh script.sh`. Nothing prevents someone from doing that.

snazz 8y ago

There are only so many adjectives in circulation. More seriously: it’s hard to put together a list like this because so many things are subjective. Maybe you prefer fish because it gets rid of some of the dumb things required for a POSIX-compatible shell, but I prefer zsh because it has every feature and the kitchen sink. I don’t know, and neither does the person putting together the list.

faho 8y ago
It would be nice if the list explained that, though! And with the ~20 zsh "frameworks" and "plugin managers" here, they could really do some comparison, or probably even remove a couple. I'd rather they showed me 3 good options and explained the trade-off than 20 options with little commentary (the lines seem to be mostly cribbed from the projects themselves).
notafraudster 8y ago
I don't know how someone reading the list would understand that "fish ... gets rid of some of the dumb things [what things?] required for a POSIX-compatible [?] shell, but [others] prefer zsh because it has every feature [what features?] and the kitchen sink." For example, I didn't realize "smart" in the list's vernacular means "deprecates dumb legacy behaviour". Your post is the first time that became obvious to me. Now to figure out what that behaviour is and why I should care and if it impacts performance and and and... My post wasn't asking the curator to make decisions for me, it was asking them to help me make decisions.

nicoburns 8y ago

If you haven't tried micro then you should, it's a huge improvement over nano. For the rest, most people are going to want what you're already using: iterm2 + zsh + homebrew. Not the OP.

L_Rahman 8y ago

I've been developing an opinion lately that what we need is fewer roundups and "objective" reporting and more opinionated here's the end-to-end stack I use and I think is good and here are the tradeoffs. With a diversity of stacks and opinions, this represents most of the roads you can go down and lets you pick the person whose approach or philosophy most closely aligns with yours.

killjoywashere 8y ago
https://usesthis.com/ https://usesthis.com/
- L_Rahman 8y ago
  This is quite good. I wish it would go a little further and let them expound on why they settled on those choices, but I understand that's not the intention of that interview format.

tshanmu 8y ago

It does not matter...a computer is a tool to solve a problem. Just pick something and stick with it a bit....

okdana 8y ago

The problem with most of these lists and how-tos is that they're the CLI equivalent of 'I Fucking Love Science'. The people suggesting things like zsh frame-works rarely seem able to properly justify their use — they don't know what they actually do, nor what the alternative is, nor even whether you could accomplish the exact same thing in a less featureful shell like bash. It's just a cargo cult of people who don't really understand what they're doing writing Medium posts or whatever to evangelise unnecessary, badly written software to other people who don't really understand what they're doing. (In zsh's case, i think that's partly the project's own fault; it has very underwhelming defaults and a very overwhelming set-up process for new users.)

mr_toad 8y ago

Bash & Homebrew & Terminal app & Nano. It’s a local minima. There’s probably better alternatives, but I’d have to summon the energy to tunnel my way over the barrier.

rovr138 8y ago

Regarding Fish. A lot of people seem to complain about loosing the ability to write scripts that work on other shells because Fish breaks compatibility. Well, I’ve been using fish for a couple of years now and besides a couple of things that are very specific to my main computer, the rest of my scripts I build as POSIX as I can. I keep everything on a repo and I can then push/pull things on new machines and have everything available. One can still execute a `/bin/sh script.sh`. Nothing prevents someone from doing that.