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I feel that most of the tools mentioned here are quite outdated already and in 2019 alternatives should be recommended. find -> fd grep -> ripgrep wget/curl

I feel that most of the tools mentioned here are quite outdated already and in 2019 alternatives should be recommended. find -> fd grep -> ripgrep wget/curl -> httpie awk/sed are just horrible to learn for beginners, would advise to just pick up python instead via xonsh[1] or pyp[2] How about we don't teach new users these legacy tools and we can finally progress a little? 1 - http://xon.sh http://xon.sh 2 - https://github.com/hauntsaninja/pyp https://github.com/hauntsaninja/pyp

deleted 6y ago
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oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
As much as I like httpie, in my view it's not a strict improvement like fd or ripgrep. This is unfortunately due to it being written in python.
- kabacha 6y ago
  Could you elaborate more why python is bad? If anything http ecosystem in python is exceptionally good.
  - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
    I never said python is bad. What I mean is that httpie is not a strict improvement because it's written in python. Ripgrep for example is a strict improvement because it's safer, more performant, and has equivalent and extended features, without missing anything. The only advantage of grep over ripgrep is that it's much older and prevalent. With the exception of this advantage of age, one can say that X is a strict improvement over Y if it can do everything Y does but better, without doing anything worse. Because HTTPie is written in python it has some disadvantages compared to curl or wget: it's not as performant, it's dependent on the Python interpreter, and less portable. If these don't matter to you, than you should use HTTPie. But it's not a strict improvement, so it's not something I can recommend to everyone, because some people will care about these things. Ripgrep and fd on the other hand I can recommend to everyone without any worry.
    - kabacha 6y ago
      At what point you need computing performance on an I/O bound task? The only performance that matters in http requests is async support. You can have 1000 pararel curl processes and will still be dusted by a single async python process.
      - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
        That may be true, that has never matter to me. What has mattered however is portability. But it doesn't really matter what weaknesses there are, what matters is that they exist. Because they exist, HTTPie is not a strong of recommendation as ripgrep or fd. You can think of it as a spectrum ranging from incomparable to strictly better. So you can't say that one should use Python over grep for example; you can't even compare the two because that doesn't make sense. They aren't even in the same space. Ripgrep however is a strict improvement over grep, it is faster, more featureful, safer, and has no downsides (with the exception of age, as I've mentioned). I think HTTPie is very close to the end of the spectrum of being a strict improvement, but it's held back by various little things that don't matter to many but still matter.
- gitgud 6y ago
  Well I use it all the time and it's a huge improvement to my life. The elegant and simple syntax makes testing endpoints so much easier than the verbose curl and wget alternatives... curl curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"some": "content"}' <host>/<resource> httpie http <host>/<resource> some=content
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coliveira 6y ago
awk is much better than a full programming language for doing simple text manipulation. It needs no preliminaries like loading libraries, setting up the environment, etc. It is just a single purpose tool to manipulate text with minimum fuss.
yesenadam 6y ago
> awk/sed are just horrible to learn for beginners That doesn't seem fair. The two are entirely different. I found Awk very friendly and easy to learn, and use it every day for all kinds of things, in one-liners and in scripts. The AWK Programming Language is masterfully written, a joy to read, as are Arnold Robbins' books. Even the man page is short and very readable.

deleted 6y ago

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oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

As much as I like httpie, in my view it's not a strict improvement like fd or ripgrep. This is unfortunately due to it being written in python.

kabacha 6y ago
Could you elaborate more why python is bad? If anything http ecosystem in python is exceptionally good.
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  I never said python is bad. What I mean is that httpie is not a strict improvement because it's written in python. Ripgrep for example is a strict improvement because it's safer, more performant, and has equivalent and extended features, without missing anything. The only advantage of grep over ripgrep is that it's much older and prevalent. With the exception of this advantage of age, one can say that X is a strict improvement over Y if it can do everything Y does but better, without doing anything worse. Because HTTPie is written in python it has some disadvantages compared to curl or wget: it's not as performant, it's dependent on the Python interpreter, and less portable. If these don't matter to you, than you should use HTTPie. But it's not a strict improvement, so it's not something I can recommend to everyone, because some people will care about these things. Ripgrep and fd on the other hand I can recommend to everyone without any worry.
  - kabacha 6y ago
    At what point you need computing performance on an I/O bound task? The only performance that matters in http requests is async support. You can have 1000 pararel curl processes and will still be dusted by a single async python process.
    - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
      That may be true, that has never matter to me. What has mattered however is portability. But it doesn't really matter what weaknesses there are, what matters is that they exist. Because they exist, HTTPie is not a strong of recommendation as ripgrep or fd. You can think of it as a spectrum ranging from incomparable to strictly better. So you can't say that one should use Python over grep for example; you can't even compare the two because that doesn't make sense. They aren't even in the same space. Ripgrep however is a strict improvement over grep, it is faster, more featureful, safer, and has no downsides (with the exception of age, as I've mentioned). I think HTTPie is very close to the end of the spectrum of being a strict improvement, but it's held back by various little things that don't matter to many but still matter.
gitgud 6y ago
Well I use it all the time and it's a huge improvement to my life. The elegant and simple syntax makes testing endpoints so much easier than the verbose curl and wget alternatives... curl curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"some": "content"}' <host>/<resource> httpie http <host>/<resource> some=content
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

coliveira 6y ago

awk is much better than a full programming language for doing simple text manipulation. It needs no preliminaries like loading libraries, setting up the environment, etc. It is just a single purpose tool to manipulate text with minimum fuss.

yesenadam 6y ago

> awk/sed are just horrible to learn for beginners That doesn't seem fair. The two are entirely different. I found Awk very friendly and easy to learn, and use it every day for all kinds of things, in one-liners and in scripts. The AWK Programming Language is masterfully written, a joy to read, as are Arnold Robbins' books. Even the man page is short and very readable.