4 ms·
I spent a long time bemoaning the sad state of shells on Windows. cmd.exe is pried out of amber for each release of Windows, so intent on remaining compatible
by ethomson 12y ago
I spent a long time bemoaning the sad state of shells on Windows. cmd.exe is pried out of amber for each release of Windows, so intent on remaining compatible with DOS and NTs gone by that it can't fix its brokenness, let alone innovate, for "fear of breaking backcompat."
PowerShell is a fine scripting language but using it as an interactive shell is sort of baffling to me, even compared to the already wonky cmd.exe. Maybe this is the new hotness and I'm just a crufty old Unix neckbeard but I just want this off my lawn.
Cygwin and friends always impress me that they work at all, but they're slow and weird. I could probably put up with the speed of I never had to remember that sometimes I'm going to need to type `/cygdrive/c` for Cygwin-type apps and sometimes I'm going to need to type `c:/` for everything else.
Clink, for me, is the best I've found. Yes, cmd.exe is still a trainwreck of bad ideas from the 90's, but at least entering command doesn't suck anymore. My emacs keys work, tab completion isn't an abomination and command history works (up arrow goes to the last command typed, `!history` works!)