Comment by Brian_K_White

Comment by Brian_K_White 2 days ago

14 replies

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The problem of powershell is not merely thet it's new and different, and not merely that you have to learn a new and different way to get a given task done.

Powershell makes some things possible or easier that weren't possible or easy, but only at the expense of making other things either impossible or at least vastly less practical, and all in all it's a bad trade off and a wrong set of priorities for the job it claims to fill, or at least for the job bash currently fills. It's not that bash is a gold standard, just that it's not fundamentally wrong.

xelamonster 2 days ago

It's also just absurdly verbose for a language intended mainly for manual input. I get annoyed having to type out `sudo systemctl` multiple times in a row, in Powershell every single command is at minimum that long. Which makes it way more difficult to memorize the commands too.

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  • WorldMaker 2 days ago

    There are ton of aliases. It's "impolite" [0] to use aliases in scripts and documentation so looking at PowerShell examples is way more verbose than actually using it day to day in a REPL. Sure I could write `Set-Location` a million times a day, but I just use `cd` in the old ways. Same with `Get-ChildItem`, I tend to just use `ls` myself because of ancient habits. (I find it interesting how many have been moving to `gci` instead as the more PowerShell-native `ls` alias. I've not been convinced to do that myself, but I think it has to do with `gci` is way more powerful than most shells' `ls` and is used to navigate everything from folder structures to object structures including that its not a bad `jq` if you convert JSON files to PowerShell objects.)

    [0] It's from a version of the Python ethos that code is read way more often than it is written, so when you are polishing PowerShell code to share with others you expand all the aliases so that it is easier to read.

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    • xelamonster 2 days ago

      Using a different set of commands in the terminal versus scripts and documentation makes no sense to me, why would I want to learn two different ways do the same thing? Python does not expect me to use `open` in the REPL but prefer `get_file_handle` in published scripts, their ethos works because the entire language has an emphasis on relatively concise readability.

      Every single command starting with `Get-` or `Set-` adds so much noise and makes things really hard to visually distinguish too. I don't want overly verbose commands in scripts for the same reason I don't want them in the terminal, it's still a pain to write and even if you have some autocomplete it makes editing harder. I don't think `ls` is any less clear or harder to learn than `Get-ChildItem` really, that name doesn't even actually give me any clue what the command does.

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      • 7bit a day ago

        It's not hard to learn. And if you don't want to, then don't. That's really not something someone cares about, unless you're working in a team.

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    • frenchyatwork 2 days ago

      What about the part of the Python ethos where "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it"

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      • WorldMaker 2 days ago

        A) PowerShell isn't Python, it doesn't have to (and doesn't) import the whole Python ethos, just the parts that make sense for a Shell and Shell language with different end goals.

        B) PowerShell doesn't care as much about the first part because shells have always had aliases and macros, but it does care about the second half "obvious way to do it". The other reason for starting with verbose names and aliasing them for day to day REPL use is to aid discovery. It's often very easy to discover which command or cmdlet does the thing you need simply because it is right there in the name. Sometimes you can just guess the name because there are only so many "allowed" verbs and you just need the noun you want to "verb". `Get-Help` can be quite powerful, `Get-Verb` can help explain some bits about what the verbosity is meant to mean. You can search for commands with `Get-Command`.

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      • nerdponx a day ago

        Python itself doesn't follow that at all, ignore it.

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  • Vegenoid 2 days ago

    IMO, getting comfortable with and tuning autocomplete makes this a non-issue, and the benefit of the verbose commands is that they are very discoverable.

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    • rustyminnow 2 days ago

      Any tips or links for tuning? zsh has a powerful engine and lots of great work out there, but when I've tried cooking my own it's all just too dense to get "comfortable" for long.

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  • emmelaich 2 days ago

    Do you know that there are short versions? e.g. gc for Get-Content

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  • abhinavk a day ago

    > sudo systemctl

    Make an alias like sctl. Takes 5 seconds.

    Or an abbr if you are using fish. They are more like text-expanders than aliases.

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  • 7bit a day ago

    Really? I only have to remember Item instead of touch, mkdir, RM, rmdir, cp, mv. All commands that have just different verbs before the Noun in Powershell. And that's for every single cmdlet out there.

    It sounds to me that you're unfairly putting your existing knowledge about Linux shells into your criticism of PowerShell. If you want to be fair that criticism should come from the POV of someone who does not now both and now wants to memorise it. And whether or not commands are short or long does not matter. People memorise lyrics, or names of hundreds of people. Length is not a factor, objectively.

    And alias do exist.

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