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Warning for newer developers: I confused myself much more than was necessary when I was first starting out, because I started using all of these tools like zsh

Warning for newer developers: I confused myself much more than was necessary when I was first starting out, because I started using all of these tools like zshell/oh-my-zsh before I understood what was really going on, specifically with my $PATH. I seriously spent about a month floundering and becoming increasingly frustrated and confused before I finally sat down, read the docs, and learned why I should have been putting stuff in ~/.zshrc instead of ~/.bashrc as a result of using zshell. If you're still learning the ropes, customizations like this can be dangerous and time-consuming. Or, at least, you won't be able to just do whatever the intro docs tell you to do on GitHub and expect things to work. Those are hoops you don't want to jump through when you're first starting out. For the more experienced hackers, this warning probably seems amateurish and unnecessary, but when I was starting I would have been particularly interested in "badassify-ing" my developer toolkit, not realizing what I was screwing up and how difficult I was making my future life.

voltagex_ 12y ago
Would you say it's worth switching to/learning zsh itself? My default has been /bin/bash for years and years and I find I'm too slow while I'm trying to learn zsh. Plus, if you spin up an image on EC2 or DigitalOcean, the default will be bash.
- cpach 12y ago
  I recently installed fish shell after about 15 years of bash usage. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to bash on my PC. I never really customized bash, and fish has so good defaults that I don’t think I'll customize it much. Web site: http://fishshell.com/ http://fishshell.com/
  - boardstretcher 12y ago
    Here is the thing. Bash is the default on most of the servers you are going to have to work on,. Centos, RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Arch,. etc. So knowing and using Bash is kind of like knowing English in the business world. Of course, don't let that detract from the usefulness of other shells out there. They can be fun and educational.
  - 0942v8653 12y ago
    Wow. Just looked at the fish docs and it takes the two reasons I almost started using zsh/omz for, syntax highlighting and completion, and by the looks of it blows the zsh versions out of the water.
    - cpach 12y ago
      The completion is excellent. It just works.
Dewie 12y ago
With Powerful Software comes ever-tempting Yak Shaving.

voltagex_ 12y ago

Would you say it's worth switching to/learning zsh itself? My default has been /bin/bash for years and years and I find I'm too slow while I'm trying to learn zsh. Plus, if you spin up an image on EC2 or DigitalOcean, the default will be bash.

cpach 12y ago
I recently installed fish shell after about 15 years of bash usage. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to bash on my PC. I never really customized bash, and fish has so good defaults that I don’t think I'll customize it much. Web site: http://fishshell.com/ http://fishshell.com/
- boardstretcher 12y ago
  Here is the thing. Bash is the default on most of the servers you are going to have to work on,. Centos, RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Arch,. etc. So knowing and using Bash is kind of like knowing English in the business world. Of course, don't let that detract from the usefulness of other shells out there. They can be fun and educational.
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  Wow. Just looked at the fish docs and it takes the two reasons I almost started using zsh/omz for, syntax highlighting and completion, and by the looks of it blows the zsh versions out of the water.
  - cpach 12y ago
    The completion is excellent. It just works.

Dewie 12y ago

With Powerful Software comes ever-tempting Yak Shaving.