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Yes, I wouldn't mind. That's what I'm saying. Imho it's a false assumption that you have to "minimize keystrokes". Programming languages noticed this a while ag

Yes, I wouldn't mind. That's what I'm saying. Imho it's a false assumption that you have to "minimize keystrokes". Programming languages noticed this a while ago. The time I spent thinking "what was that command again?" is far greater than the time I would need to type a few more characters.

RBerenguel 13y ago
As I answered about (so I'm repeating it again :D) minimising keystrokes can also minimise typos (or generate horribly harmful ones, too, agreed)
thaumasiotes 13y ago
> The time I spent thinking "what was that command again?" is far greater than the time I would need to type a few more characters. For ls? rm? mv? I use ls many times per day. Lengthening the name would be a huge loss for absolutely no gain; the odds of my forgetting what it's called are precisely zero. The more you use something, the more gain you get from a short name; unix commands are a near-perfect example of where even cryptic names (which mv, cp, rm, and ls do not qualify as) are very desirable.
nknighthb 13y ago
Commands are not APIs, and an interactive shell is not a programming language. It's an interactive user interface that some of us spend significant portions of our lives dealing with. I no more want to type an API-like "list_files" command ten billion times than I want to have it take ten mouse clicks to launch an application.
MichaelGG 13y ago
PowerShell does that - everything's a long verbose command. It helps avoid clashes in the global namespace. But it's only really usable with autocomplete. Same with Java, C#, and so on. Also, in local scope, long verbose names are far less readable. It might seem more skimmable or easy to get into a codebase with verbose names, but when you're debugging pieces of code, all the extra letters seem to clutter things up.
- mkesper 13y ago
  Sure, t, i, j and f are much more readable than elapsed_time, row_index, col_index and input_file. ;)

RBerenguel 13y ago

As I answered about (so I'm repeating it again :D) minimising keystrokes can also minimise typos (or generate horribly harmful ones, too, agreed)

thaumasiotes 13y ago

> The time I spent thinking "what was that command again?" is far greater than the time I would need to type a few more characters. For ls? rm? mv? I use ls many times per day. Lengthening the name would be a huge loss for absolutely no gain; the odds of my forgetting what it's called are precisely zero. The more you use something, the more gain you get from a short name; unix commands are a near-perfect example of where even cryptic names (which mv, cp, rm, and ls do not qualify as) are very desirable.

nknighthb 13y ago

Commands are not APIs, and an interactive shell is not a programming language. It's an interactive user interface that some of us spend significant portions of our lives dealing with. I no more want to type an API-like "list_files" command ten billion times than I want to have it take ten mouse clicks to launch an application.

MichaelGG 13y ago

PowerShell does that - everything's a long verbose command. It helps avoid clashes in the global namespace. But it's only really usable with autocomplete. Same with Java, C#, and so on. Also, in local scope, long verbose names are far less readable. It might seem more skimmable or easy to get into a codebase with verbose names, but when you're debugging pieces of code, all the extra letters seem to clutter things up.

mkesper 13y ago
Sure, t, i, j and f are much more readable than elapsed_time, row_index, col_index and input_file. ;)