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Everything looks okay except for the section regarding other “friendly” shells: that’s really the part where we as an industry don’t need more fragmentation.

by znpy 5y ago

sophacles 5y ago
Right, how dare people use tools that they find comfortable and enjoy using? What if they choose a tool that goes against your preferences, or worse (bad word coming, consider yourself warned) makes you have to learn something?
- _vdpp 5y ago
  As a fish user myself, I’ll admit there is something to be said for standardization. It’s easy to poke fun at somebody for being afraid to learn something new - but with the explosion of different tools it’s becoming impossible to stay abreast of all the changes and feel proficient in anything anymore.
  - BirAdam 5y ago
    Standardization builds industries and economies of scale. Having competing standards is great for technologists, but makes the current problem particularly painful: in job descriptions, employers now specify not just general technologies used but also particular frameworks, ci/cd tools, and on and on. So many tools that a person must be competent with using, that only a handful of people might know all of them on day one, which makes hiring much more expensive. You either pay over market rate for the perfect person, or hire someone decent and pay for them to learn the job. Ultimately, I think we’re in a better place than we were without modern tooling, but it makes it hard to hire…
jeroenhd 5y ago
I don't see the problem. I like zsh and I can live with bash. I've tried fish, but it just didn't click with me. Others swear by fish and how it revolutionised their terminal. Hell,I've seen people fall in love with Powershell of all shells because of its interactivity and cross platform scripting language that doesn't rely on Unix tools being present in $PATH. I don't get it, but that's okay; they can have their preferences and I can have mine. You've got to find what works for you. Nano, emacs, .*vim, vi, using a magnetic needle to manually flip bits on a spinning platter, it doesn't matter, whatever keeps you happy and/or productive. The vast majority of Linux users seem to use bash. Zsh has been picked up more and more by Apple for licensing and the "threat" of open source. I don't think shells like fish are a threat to the ecosystem as long as they keep the most basic form of compatibility with bash (not sh). You need bash installed anyway, otherwise you can't curl2bash to install "modern" Linux software!
- hedora 5y ago
  The problem comes in when you need to manage 100's of machines, and there isn't a single shell that is in everyone on the team's muscle memory.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    You don’t use a shell for that, directly. Ansible, puppet, docker, etc.
  - theamk 5y ago
    That's what sh or bash is for, a least common denominator present on every machine. Sure, it is not the same as your home machine - but even with the right shell, you customized config files woukd still be missing. So it is easier to get used to defaukt setup on defaut shell when managing many machines. (This is the reason I had to learn vi back in the day: sure, my machine has lovingly customized emacs.. But that old Sun one needs to debug? Vi only.)
    - fragmede 5y ago
      and not even vim, but vi.
    - justaj 5y ago
      I would argue it's sh (Bourne shell, or POSIX shell rather) than Bash, as Bash is not present by default on some notable Linux distros (Alpine Linux, OpenWRT etc.) and especially not present out of the box on many popular *BSD variants.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    For that you have to standardize on bash compatible. It's ok if the exact command/syntax isn't in muscle memory. I've worked with a number of "alternative shell" fans and one thing that nearly everyone agrees on is that "bash compatible" is the lingua franca and the standard.
    - 5y ago
plandis 5y ago
Disagree. In my experience it’s way easier to use something like fish out of the box rather than spending hours configuring bash to your liking assuming you don’t have your dot files made to your liking yet. If someone is just starting out I’d absolutely recommend something like fish or zsh over bash or csh.
- aulin 5y ago
  It's almost twenty years that I use Linux daily and the only thing I ever changed in .bashrc is the history size. What kind of customizations are we talking about? maybe I'm missing out using stock bash configuration and I should start customizing it to my liking it (serious, no sarcasm)
  - barefeg 5y ago
    Autocomplete from history is something I really enjoy from my config. I can live without the nice colors and data. Though having the execution time of the previous command has been very handy a few times
  - fragmede 5y ago
    fzf for command history searching custom PATH for your own programs options to programs like LESS
- p5a0u9l 5y ago
  History-based auto completion is a productivity game changer. But, You can get fish-like niceties with trivial effort in zsh. The deal breaker for be with fish is abandoning decades of bash syntax. With zsh, I can have my fancy, productive prompt and still write bash-compatible sheets scripts.
rmbyrro 5y ago
And who is gonna decide which shells stay or go?

Everything looks okay except for the section regarding other “friendly” shells: that’s really the part where we as an industry don’t need more fragmentation.

by znpy 5y ago

Everything looks okay except for the section regarding other “friendly” shells: that’s really the part where we as an industry don’t need more fragmentation.

sophacles 5y ago

Right, how dare people use tools that they find comfortable and enjoy using? What if they choose a tool that goes against your preferences, or worse (bad word coming, consider yourself warned) makes you have to learn something?

_vdpp 5y ago
As a fish user myself, I’ll admit there is something to be said for standardization. It’s easy to poke fun at somebody for being afraid to learn something new - but with the explosion of different tools it’s becoming impossible to stay abreast of all the changes and feel proficient in anything anymore.
- BirAdam 5y ago
  Standardization builds industries and economies of scale. Having competing standards is great for technologists, but makes the current problem particularly painful: in job descriptions, employers now specify not just general technologies used but also particular frameworks, ci/cd tools, and on and on. So many tools that a person must be competent with using, that only a handful of people might know all of them on day one, which makes hiring much more expensive. You either pay over market rate for the perfect person, or hire someone decent and pay for them to learn the job. Ultimately, I think we’re in a better place than we were without modern tooling, but it makes it hard to hire…

jeroenhd 5y ago

I don't see the problem. I like zsh and I can live with bash. I've tried fish, but it just didn't click with me. Others swear by fish and how it revolutionised their terminal. Hell,I've seen people fall in love with Powershell of all shells because of its interactivity and cross platform scripting language that doesn't rely on Unix tools being present in $PATH. I don't get it, but that's okay; they can have their preferences and I can have mine. You've got to find what works for you. Nano, emacs, .*vim, vi, using a magnetic needle to manually flip bits on a spinning platter, it doesn't matter, whatever keeps you happy and/or productive. The vast majority of Linux users seem to use bash. Zsh has been picked up more and more by Apple for licensing and the "threat" of open source. I don't think shells like fish are a threat to the ecosystem as long as they keep the most basic form of compatibility with bash (not sh). You need bash installed anyway, otherwise you can't curl2bash to install "modern" Linux software!

hedora 5y ago
The problem comes in when you need to manage 100's of machines, and there isn't a single shell that is in everyone on the team's muscle memory.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  You don’t use a shell for that, directly. Ansible, puppet, docker, etc.
- theamk 5y ago
  That's what sh or bash is for, a least common denominator present on every machine. Sure, it is not the same as your home machine - but even with the right shell, you customized config files woukd still be missing. So it is easier to get used to defaukt setup on defaut shell when managing many machines. (This is the reason I had to learn vi back in the day: sure, my machine has lovingly customized emacs.. But that old Sun one needs to debug? Vi only.)
  - fragmede 5y ago
    and not even vim, but vi.
  - justaj 5y ago
    I would argue it's sh (Bourne shell, or POSIX shell rather) than Bash, as Bash is not present by default on some notable Linux distros (Alpine Linux, OpenWRT etc.) and especially not present out of the box on many popular *BSD variants.
- freedomben 5y ago
  For that you have to standardize on bash compatible. It's ok if the exact command/syntax isn't in muscle memory. I've worked with a number of "alternative shell" fans and one thing that nearly everyone agrees on is that "bash compatible" is the lingua franca and the standard.
  - 5y ago

plandis 5y ago

Disagree. In my experience it’s way easier to use something like fish out of the box rather than spending hours configuring bash to your liking assuming you don’t have your dot files made to your liking yet. If someone is just starting out I’d absolutely recommend something like fish or zsh over bash or csh.

aulin 5y ago
It's almost twenty years that I use Linux daily and the only thing I ever changed in .bashrc is the history size. What kind of customizations are we talking about? maybe I'm missing out using stock bash configuration and I should start customizing it to my liking it (serious, no sarcasm)
- barefeg 5y ago
  Autocomplete from history is something I really enjoy from my config. I can live without the nice colors and data. Though having the execution time of the previous command has been very handy a few times
- fragmede 5y ago
  fzf for command history searching custom PATH for your own programs options to programs like LESS
p5a0u9l 5y ago
History-based auto completion is a productivity game changer. But, You can get fish-like niceties with trivial effort in zsh. The deal breaker for be with fish is abandoning decades of bash syntax. With zsh, I can have my fancy, productive prompt and still write bash-compatible sheets scripts.

rmbyrro 5y ago

And who is gonna decide which shells stay or go?