6 ms·

Ha! Funny, I just switched _back_ to Bash because I found ZSH so flakey and amateur. I tried for years to like it, even tried oh-my-zsh, and fine tuning myself

by ghusto 5y ago

Ha! Funny, I just switched _back_ to Bash because I found ZSH so flakey and amateur. I tried for years to like it, even tried oh-my-zsh, and fine tuning myself. Finally got fed up with its laggy "smart" crap and went back, and oh man am I happy I did. Everything works, it works fast, and it does exactly what I tell it to and no more.

jeltz 5y ago
My experience id aldo the zsh is slow compared to bash. I am using the defaults from Apple on an M1 with some minor modifcations.
- opk 5y ago
  On raw defaults, I find it hard to see that you can do anything with either bash or zsh where the shell itself does anything where you can even notice a delay. Things like basic file completion or history searching are basically instant. For scripting there are plenty of benchmarks out there and zsh typically beats bash but both are beaten my minimal shells like dash.
Beltalowda 5y ago
You don't need to use oh-my-zsh and "laggy smart crap" though; it works just fine without it. I don't have most of the advanced features enabled, except that listing completion options doesn't push text up, which I found really useful after I got used to it. As well as being able to navigate it with the arrow keys. I never noticed it's slow, and I used zsh on a Pentium N-something budget laptop that definitely wasn't fast.
quesera 5y ago
I think you're judging zsh based on third party add-ons or non-default config. You can make bash flaky and amateur that way too. Stock zsh is neither though. It's quick and solid. No surprises.
- dmix 5y ago
  Ditto with Vim/Emacs/VSCode/etc. All of them can be slowed to a crawl or be unpredictable with plugins.
- soraminazuki 5y ago
  Yeah, one shouldn't be judging the performance and stability of zsh based on oh-my-zsh of all things. oh-my-zsh is one giant mix of everyone's configs, which severely degrades performance and stability. It's for people who want most features out of zsh in the quickest way possible. Those who prefers an optimized config would be better off configuring zsh themselves. Even getting the autocompletion right would provide a great QOL improvement over anything bash can provide, though it's unfortunately a bit trickier to configure than is ideal.
  - opk 5y ago
    Unfortunately, it doesn't get you most features out of zsh. It leaves a lot disabled too. It turns on the included completions, adds flashy prompt themes and a pile of aliases that you still need to learn if you want to get any benefit from them. Key bindings are largely left untouched with none of the advanced widgets.
- ghusto 5y ago
  I don't know, I mean I got rid of all that oh-my-zsh stuff and tried configuring it lean, too. An example of the flakey feeling I'm talking about is the way auto-complete works. I hit tab, and it does a fuzzy suggestion? Then when you're done with the suggestions and picked (or not), they disappear? Or just the fact that auto-correction exists at all? Okay these things are subjective, and maybe not exactly "flakey", but they make if feel like that to me. Interestingly, I just took _all_ configuration out and tried it, and startup was blazing fast! It looks like whatever was slowing it down is actually in my Bash configuration (which I also load in ZSH). Doesn't slow down Bash startup though, wonder what it is :P

by ghusto 5y ago

jeltz 5y ago

My experience id aldo the zsh is slow compared to bash. I am using the defaults from Apple on an M1 with some minor modifcations.

opk 5y ago
On raw defaults, I find it hard to see that you can do anything with either bash or zsh where the shell itself does anything where you can even notice a delay. Things like basic file completion or history searching are basically instant. For scripting there are plenty of benchmarks out there and zsh typically beats bash but both are beaten my minimal shells like dash.

Beltalowda 5y ago

You don't need to use oh-my-zsh and "laggy smart crap" though; it works just fine without it. I don't have most of the advanced features enabled, except that listing completion options doesn't push text up, which I found really useful after I got used to it. As well as being able to navigate it with the arrow keys. I never noticed it's slow, and I used zsh on a Pentium N-something budget laptop that definitely wasn't fast.

quesera 5y ago

I think you're judging zsh based on third party add-ons or non-default config. You can make bash flaky and amateur that way too. Stock zsh is neither though. It's quick and solid. No surprises.

dmix 5y ago
Ditto with Vim/Emacs/VSCode/etc. All of them can be slowed to a crawl or be unpredictable with plugins.
soraminazuki 5y ago
Yeah, one shouldn't be judging the performance and stability of zsh based on oh-my-zsh of all things. oh-my-zsh is one giant mix of everyone's configs, which severely degrades performance and stability. It's for people who want most features out of zsh in the quickest way possible. Those who prefers an optimized config would be better off configuring zsh themselves. Even getting the autocompletion right would provide a great QOL improvement over anything bash can provide, though it's unfortunately a bit trickier to configure than is ideal.
- opk 5y ago
  Unfortunately, it doesn't get you most features out of zsh. It leaves a lot disabled too. It turns on the included completions, adds flashy prompt themes and a pile of aliases that you still need to learn if you want to get any benefit from them. Key bindings are largely left untouched with none of the advanced widgets.
ghusto 5y ago
I don't know, I mean I got rid of all that oh-my-zsh stuff and tried configuring it lean, too. An example of the flakey feeling I'm talking about is the way auto-complete works. I hit tab, and it does a fuzzy suggestion? Then when you're done with the suggestions and picked (or not), they disappear? Or just the fact that auto-correction exists at all? Okay these things are subjective, and maybe not exactly "flakey", but they make if feel like that to me. Interestingly, I just took _all_ configuration out and tried it, and startup was blazing fast! It looks like whatever was slowing it down is actually in my Bash configuration (which I also load in ZSH). Doesn't slow down Bash startup though, wonder what it is :P