4 ms·

It is a pretty sloppy and archaic language. We need an updated version that keeps the string typing and inline execution of external binaries, but has modern sy

by woah 6y ago

It is a pretty sloppy and archaic language. We need an updated version that keeps the string typing and inline execution of external binaries, but has modern syntax, plus a few more conveniences and guardrails.

__MatrixMan__ 6y ago
I was only taking issue with the objection to string typing. I totally agree that the rest of bash requires a bit of stockholm syndrome to love. I haven't yet taken the time to play with it but I'm hoping www.oilshell.org addresses some of the warts.
partdavid 6y ago
You might be interested in Powershell. I used bash for 20 years and considered myself an experienced user and programmer with it. Comparatively, my experience with Powershell is relatively short, but I switched to it and the first time I needed to handle a piece of structured data I was hooked and haven't looked back.
- pnako 6y ago
  I recently discovered Powershell, in a Windows context. It's weird, but has interesting ideas, and is better than bash for sure. Supposedly it supports Linux, but I haven't actually tried.
  - partdavid 6y ago
    It does, and MacOS, and I found that once I changed to bash-style tab-completion and used PSReadLine to get the keybindings I was familiar with, it becomes a pretty comfortable shell. I remove some default shell aliases because PowerShell's notion of file modes and permissions ends up not mapping well, but you have all your normal Unix commands available so it's not really a big deal. Quoting is weird but it's not worse than bash, where quoting is also weird. It's surprising how well objects-as-arguments and objects-as-pipelines work, even when mixing with standard Unix commands. I appreciate standard parameter handling, command naming and I think it pays off on the "Unix philosophy" (small program units doing one thing well) better than bash and shell tools. Those standard approaches produce an aesthetic I didn't like for a long time (Invoke-RestMethod -Url ...) but aliases cut down on your typing (irm instead of Invoke-RestMethod) and I now appreciate the discoverability of standard commands. I keep discovering little gems like default parameter values and the various ConvertFrom-* commands, some from modules.

by woah 6y ago

__MatrixMan__ 6y ago

I was only taking issue with the objection to string typing. I totally agree that the rest of bash requires a bit of stockholm syndrome to love. I haven't yet taken the time to play with it but I'm hoping www.oilshell.org addresses some of the warts.

partdavid 6y ago

You might be interested in Powershell. I used bash for 20 years and considered myself an experienced user and programmer with it. Comparatively, my experience with Powershell is relatively short, but I switched to it and the first time I needed to handle a piece of structured data I was hooked and haven't looked back.

pnako 6y ago
I recently discovered Powershell, in a Windows context. It's weird, but has interesting ideas, and is better than bash for sure. Supposedly it supports Linux, but I haven't actually tried.
- partdavid 6y ago
  It does, and MacOS, and I found that once I changed to bash-style tab-completion and used PSReadLine to get the keybindings I was familiar with, it becomes a pretty comfortable shell. I remove some default shell aliases because PowerShell's notion of file modes and permissions ends up not mapping well, but you have all your normal Unix commands available so it's not really a big deal. Quoting is weird but it's not worse than bash, where quoting is also weird. It's surprising how well objects-as-arguments and objects-as-pipelines work, even when mixing with standard Unix commands. I appreciate standard parameter handling, command naming and I think it pays off on the "Unix philosophy" (small program units doing one thing well) better than bash and shell tools. Those standard approaches produce an aesthetic I didn't like for a long time (Invoke-RestMethod -Url ...) but aliases cut down on your typing (irm instead of Invoke-RestMethod) and I now appreciate the discoverability of standard commands. I keep discovering little gems like default parameter values and the various ConvertFrom-* commands, some from modules.