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If you work with mechanical or electrical engineers, then you're going to run into Windows machines pretty quick, and then you need to convince them to install

If you work with mechanical or electrical engineers, then you're going to run into Windows machines pretty quick, and then you need to convince them to install minGW to run your shell scripts. Sure, shell scripts are portable between Mac and *nix, but you're leaving out a large elephant.

addicted 6y ago
I used git bash and it worked just fine. But now you can use Linux subsystem for Windows. I don’t have much experience with this so I’m not sure how well it works in practice but most people seem to rave about it.
- rubatuga 6y ago
  More than once did I type ls -lah into a command prompt window to be sorely disappointed.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Powershell has an ls alias.
filmgirlcw 6y ago
Hopefully the next rise or WSL, Windows Terminal, and the OSS PowerShell will help that. I’ve anecdotally noticed more people using or willing to use PowerShell in some scenarios, now that it’s at parity on Mac and Linux (there are a few things in old-school classic Windows PowerShell that don’t work on Mac/Linux but the future direction and support is all x-platform) and it’s certainly easier to get a Linux shell running in Windows than ever before. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on any of these tools.
- eeskildsen 6y ago
  Cross-platform PowerShell is fantastic. It's one of the first things I install on a new Linux box nowadays. I don't think I could go back to a string-based shell. Objects are so much cleaner and easier to manipulate. Plus you get a huge standard library out of the box with its .NET integration. It's really impressive what Microsoft has done with it.
astrobe_ 6y ago
Depending on your needs, the Windows port of Busybox might do the trick. Personally, I don't like the shell that much. As others pointed out, it is a consistency-lacking set of programs that often do only trivial tasks (by design). A proper cross-platform scripting language such as Perl, Python or Newlisp. The latter is very much like Busybox : it packs a lot in a small single executable (plus it is a Lisp-like language so the syntax is simple and the documentation is good).
antb123 6y ago
Ironically 2 years ago they would have been running unix workstations and due to 2 or two software vendors they have been forced onto windows. Architects also can use Mac's only part of the time. A lot of software just isn't available for anything other than windows (Rhino etc).
lenkite 6y ago
Git bash is something that nearly every engineer installs nowadays on windows.

addicted 6y ago

I used git bash and it worked just fine. But now you can use Linux subsystem for Windows. I don’t have much experience with this so I’m not sure how well it works in practice but most people seem to rave about it.

rubatuga 6y ago
More than once did I type ls -lah into a command prompt window to be sorely disappointed.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Powershell has an ls alias.

filmgirlcw 6y ago

Hopefully the next rise or WSL, Windows Terminal, and the OSS PowerShell will help that. I’ve anecdotally noticed more people using or willing to use PowerShell in some scenarios, now that it’s at parity on Mac and Linux (there are a few things in old-school classic Windows PowerShell that don’t work on Mac/Linux but the future direction and support is all x-platform) and it’s certainly easier to get a Linux shell running in Windows than ever before. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on any of these tools.

eeskildsen 6y ago
Cross-platform PowerShell is fantastic. It's one of the first things I install on a new Linux box nowadays. I don't think I could go back to a string-based shell. Objects are so much cleaner and easier to manipulate. Plus you get a huge standard library out of the box with its .NET integration. It's really impressive what Microsoft has done with it.

astrobe_ 6y ago

Depending on your needs, the Windows port of Busybox might do the trick. Personally, I don't like the shell that much. As others pointed out, it is a consistency-lacking set of programs that often do only trivial tasks (by design). A proper cross-platform scripting language such as Perl, Python or Newlisp. The latter is very much like Busybox : it packs a lot in a small single executable (plus it is a Lisp-like language so the syntax is simple and the documentation is good).

antb123 6y ago

Ironically 2 years ago they would have been running unix workstations and due to 2 or two software vendors they have been forced onto windows. Architects also can use Mac's only part of the time. A lot of software just isn't available for anything other than windows (Rhino etc).

lenkite 6y ago

Git bash is something that nearly every engineer installs nowadays on windows.