5 ms·

Nit: Fish Shell is a bit redundant, as Fish stands for "Friendly Interactive Shell". Now that's out of my system, fish is fantastic and made me realise importa

Nit: Fish Shell is a bit redundant, as Fish stands for "Friendly Interactive Shell". Now that's out of my system, fish is fantastic and made me realise importance of sensible defaults. I tried zsh but configuration took longer than I would have liked, and oh-my-zsh is too bloated to start instantly. Compared to that, I have practically 0 modifications in my Fish config, apart from few aliases. I don't use fish for more than one-liners, and I never intend to. It is a very nice very fast and very lightweight way to interact with my system, which I believe was the original point of Shells in general. Either way, glad to see it on frontpage.

t3chguy 5y ago
I could not agree more, I'm sure zsh can do everything fish can and a lot more, but getting it to that stage would take me more time than I'll spend interacting with fish for the next few months
s_dev 5y ago
> Nit: Fish Shell is a bit redundant, as Fish stands for "Friendly Interactive Shell". Isn't this a common trope with software e.g. "WINE is not an emulator" or people saying "ATM Machine".
- cnity 5y ago
  Your first example is a recursive acronym (actually a backronym in this case), and is deliberate. That's the trope. Redundancy is usually just incorrect but common use of natural language. Edit: I'm wrong about WINE being a backronym, but it is a recursive acronym.
  - cedilla 5y ago
    > Redundancy is usually just incorrect How is it incorrect?
    - cnity 5y ago
      Perhaps a weaker way of putting it is that it is colloquial, but not proper form.
      - afarrell 5y ago
        > not proper form Which is annoying to those who value form more than function.
        cnity 5y ago
        Sure. I don't have an opinion one way or another and almost certainly "misuse" acronyms.
- toxik 5y ago
  RAM memory DVD disc LCD display We like our nouns to be general, and rather turn the acronym into an adjective. It makes good sense too: PROM memory, BluRay disc, OLED display show their connections
- cedilla 5y ago
  It is, and "RAS syndrome" (redundant acronym syndrome syndrome) should be encouraged, not avoided. "PIN number" is easier and faster to understand. Probably better understood than "PI number" or the expanded form. And in this case, a link just named "fish" would have been fairly ambiguous.
bglusman 5y ago
It is a bit redundant, but that's not the same thing as saying it's bad or author should have eliminated this redundancy. I think of this a bit like a Checksum, which is also a redundancy... it reduces cognitive load/likelihood of error by the reader when parsing this particular acronym. Like ATM can mean both "At the moment" and "Automated Teller Machine", saying "ATM Machine" helps disambiguate (in a way) which acronym you mean. Often context is enough to do this, but as a habit/affordance to users with variable levels of familiarity with the context, I think it's a useful and good redundancy rather than a wasteful one to be eliminated.
- afarrell 5y ago
  Any medium of human communication (text, speech, body language, etc...) is lossy. Humans need acknowledgment, retransmission, and redundancy.
luke2m 5y ago
I’m not sure if I would click on a HN link that said just “Fish”. But Fish is great.
yewenjie 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  No. This is not RAS. It's a continuation of a long trend in *nix/FLOSS for using recursive acronyms. One of the earliest: GNU: GNU's Not Unix The one closest to me (though I didn't invent it): JACK - the JACK Audio Connection kit.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    It is. See the difference: GNU Operating System -> GNU's Not Unix Operating System Fish Shell -> Friendly Interactive Shell Shell One expands to include the original acronym, but doesn't duplicate the descriptive extra words. The other doesn't expand to include the original acronym, but does duplicate the descriptive extra word. In other words, one is recursive but not redundant, the other is redundant but not recursive.
    - trogdor3000 5y ago
      What about bash shell? Bourne Again SHell shell. That's the same thing. But i think it can be a helpful distinction between using bash shell as an interactive shell and using the bash scripting language.
      - mumblemumble 5y ago
        Yup. I'm one of those folks who thinks that RAS syndrome is an entertaining and occasionally useful language quirk, and not at all a problem. For example, even within a computing context, saying "Fish shell" just might help someone understand that you're talking about the Unix shell and not the cipher, and would always help someone who's not familiar with Fish to at least understand that you're talking about an alternative Unix shell. By contrast, whenever someone posts a Hacker News article about ML, the first comment is invariably someone complaining that they thought it would be about machine learning, and this is unnecessarily confusing, and a borderline injustice, it should change its name, etc. It would probably be easier for everyone involved if it were idiomatic to say "ML language", even thought doing so would be redundant.
hibbelig 5y ago
They could have written "Fish the shell" to disambiguate from "fish the animal" and nobody would have complained. But they left out "the", and now it's redundant? Isn't it funny how the mind works?
chc 5y ago
I disagree that it's actually redundant. It's like if back in 2004 somebody said "Apple computers are overpriced and underpowered." Technically, "Apple" in that sentence stands for "Apple Computer," so you're saying "Apple Computer computers are overpriced and underpowered." But that's fine, because it's just part of the company's name, not actually a redundancy. No copy editor would have flagged that, but they would have flagged attempts to remove the redundancy by saying things like "Apples" or "Apple Computers." Similarly, Fish is a name, so adding "shell" is useful in identifying the thing you're naming.
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
a good friend of mine used to say NIC Card Card

t3chguy 5y ago

I could not agree more, I'm sure zsh can do everything fish can and a lot more, but getting it to that stage would take me more time than I'll spend interacting with fish for the next few months

s_dev 5y ago

> Nit: Fish Shell is a bit redundant, as Fish stands for "Friendly Interactive Shell". Isn't this a common trope with software e.g. "WINE is not an emulator" or people saying "ATM Machine".

cnity 5y ago
Your first example is a recursive acronym (actually a backronym in this case), and is deliberate. That's the trope. Redundancy is usually just incorrect but common use of natural language. Edit: I'm wrong about WINE being a backronym, but it is a recursive acronym.
- cedilla 5y ago
  > Redundancy is usually just incorrect How is it incorrect?
  - cnity 5y ago
    Perhaps a weaker way of putting it is that it is colloquial, but not proper form.
    - afarrell 5y ago
      > not proper form Which is annoying to those who value form more than function.
      - cnity 5y ago
        Sure. I don't have an opinion one way or another and almost certainly "misuse" acronyms.
toxik 5y ago
RAM memory DVD disc LCD display We like our nouns to be general, and rather turn the acronym into an adjective. It makes good sense too: PROM memory, BluRay disc, OLED display show their connections
cedilla 5y ago
It is, and "RAS syndrome" (redundant acronym syndrome syndrome) should be encouraged, not avoided. "PIN number" is easier and faster to understand. Probably better understood than "PI number" or the expanded form. And in this case, a link just named "fish" would have been fairly ambiguous.

bglusman 5y ago

It is a bit redundant, but that's not the same thing as saying it's bad or author should have eliminated this redundancy. I think of this a bit like a Checksum, which is also a redundancy... it reduces cognitive load/likelihood of error by the reader when parsing this particular acronym. Like ATM can mean both "At the moment" and "Automated Teller Machine", saying "ATM Machine" helps disambiguate (in a way) which acronym you mean. Often context is enough to do this, but as a habit/affordance to users with variable levels of familiarity with the context, I think it's a useful and good redundancy rather than a wasteful one to be eliminated.

afarrell 5y ago
Any medium of human communication (text, speech, body language, etc...) is lossy. Humans need acknowledgment, retransmission, and redundancy.

luke2m 5y ago

I’m not sure if I would click on a HN link that said just “Fish”. But Fish is great.

yewenjie 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
No. This is not RAS. It's a continuation of a long trend in *nix/FLOSS for using recursive acronyms. One of the earliest: GNU: GNU's Not Unix The one closest to me (though I didn't invent it): JACK - the JACK Audio Connection kit.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  It is. See the difference: GNU Operating System -> GNU's Not Unix Operating System Fish Shell -> Friendly Interactive Shell Shell One expands to include the original acronym, but doesn't duplicate the descriptive extra words. The other doesn't expand to include the original acronym, but does duplicate the descriptive extra word. In other words, one is recursive but not redundant, the other is redundant but not recursive.
  - trogdor3000 5y ago
    What about bash shell? Bourne Again SHell shell. That's the same thing. But i think it can be a helpful distinction between using bash shell as an interactive shell and using the bash scripting language.
    - mumblemumble 5y ago
      Yup. I'm one of those folks who thinks that RAS syndrome is an entertaining and occasionally useful language quirk, and not at all a problem. For example, even within a computing context, saying "Fish shell" just might help someone understand that you're talking about the Unix shell and not the cipher, and would always help someone who's not familiar with Fish to at least understand that you're talking about an alternative Unix shell. By contrast, whenever someone posts a Hacker News article about ML, the first comment is invariably someone complaining that they thought it would be about machine learning, and this is unnecessarily confusing, and a borderline injustice, it should change its name, etc. It would probably be easier for everyone involved if it were idiomatic to say "ML language", even thought doing so would be redundant.

hibbelig 5y ago

They could have written "Fish the shell" to disambiguate from "fish the animal" and nobody would have complained. But they left out "the", and now it's redundant? Isn't it funny how the mind works?

chc 5y ago

I disagree that it's actually redundant. It's like if back in 2004 somebody said "Apple computers are overpriced and underpowered." Technically, "Apple" in that sentence stands for "Apple Computer," so you're saying "Apple Computer computers are overpriced and underpowered." But that's fine, because it's just part of the company's name, not actually a redundancy. No copy editor would have flagged that, but they would have flagged attempts to remove the redundancy by saying things like "Apples" or "Apple Computers." Similarly, Fish is a name, so adding "shell" is useful in identifying the thing you're naming.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

a good friend of mine used to say NIC Card Card