4 ms·

So according to you, there should be no innovation, never?

by n0n0n4t0r 2y ago

Galanwe 2y ago
No, but innovation should be major, not cosmetic.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  The whole point of an interactive shell is cosmetic convenience.
  - yoavm 2y ago
    and perhaps that's why today's shells are not very far from the shells 20 years ago.
    - pxc 2y ago
      I don't follow. How does the one explain the other?
  - mrln 2y ago
    It's not cosmetic in this case. As others have already pointed out, the elvish version handles a few minor but important special cases that bash does not handle.
- xiaq 2y ago
  I would invite you to read the rest of the explainers, which go into deeper differences: https://elv.sh/learn/scripting-case-studies.html https://elv.sh/learn/scripting-case-studies.html Re "cosmetic" - I'd agree that the extent syntax matters is more limited compared to semantics, but that limited extent can be a lot of the daily experience with a language! I've ported many bash scripts to Elvish and I still find it liberating to not have to write double quotes everywhere for my script to handle whitespaces correctly.
- pxc 2y ago
  The biggest innovation here (shells centered on structured data rather than strings) comes from PowerShell. But PowerShell sucks as an interactive shell. I see the basic concept for Elvish as PowerShell's language power, but with the more Unix-y sensibilities of traditional shells, plus, crucially, the human-friendly focus on rich built-ins for interactivity exemplified by fish. I don't think a real-world implementation of that kind of idea is a 'merely cosmetic' innovation. There's real novelty in that synthesis. How to balance those inspirations is not obvious, and neither is how to fill the gaps between the big picture ideas and a usable tool. Go use Elvish for a while and you'll see how much creativity has clearly gone into it. Hell, just browse the GitHub issues and you'll see.

4 ms·

So according to you, there should be no innovation, never?

by n0n0n4t0r 2y ago

So according to you, there should be no innovation, never?

Galanwe 2y ago
No, but innovation should be major, not cosmetic.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  The whole point of an interactive shell is cosmetic convenience.
  - yoavm 2y ago
    and perhaps that's why today's shells are not very far from the shells 20 years ago.
    - pxc 2y ago
      I don't follow. How does the one explain the other?
  - mrln 2y ago
    It's not cosmetic in this case. As others have already pointed out, the elvish version handles a few minor but important special cases that bash does not handle.
- xiaq 2y ago
  I would invite you to read the rest of the explainers, which go into deeper differences: https://elv.sh/learn/scripting-case-studies.html https://elv.sh/learn/scripting-case-studies.html Re "cosmetic" - I'd agree that the extent syntax matters is more limited compared to semantics, but that limited extent can be a lot of the daily experience with a language! I've ported many bash scripts to Elvish and I still find it liberating to not have to write double quotes everywhere for my script to handle whitespaces correctly.
- pxc 2y ago
  The biggest innovation here (shells centered on structured data rather than strings) comes from PowerShell. But PowerShell sucks as an interactive shell. I see the basic concept for Elvish as PowerShell's language power, but with the more Unix-y sensibilities of traditional shells, plus, crucially, the human-friendly focus on rich built-ins for interactivity exemplified by fish. I don't think a real-world implementation of that kind of idea is a 'merely cosmetic' innovation. There's real novelty in that synthesis. How to balance those inspirations is not obvious, and neither is how to fill the gaps between the big picture ideas and a usable tool. Go use Elvish for a while and you'll see how much creativity has clearly gone into it. Hell, just browse the GitHub issues and you'll see.