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A Saner Windows Command Line

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21–30 of 164 posts

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#21
Why would you even want to make Windows command line better, instead of using a state of the art command line of Linux via a VM running in Windows, if you really cannot escape the Windows realm ?

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#22
post #16
post #2

At our office we jokingly refer to powershell as "two googles per line" - a term coined by its strongest proponent at the company. It thought it would come naturally over time, but it never does. It seems needlessly cryptic and verbose in so many ways. I've started using LinqPad for stuff I would normally do in cmd now.

Learning Bash is just as cryptic. At least powershell function names have logic behind them.

I've only been working professionally with linux for 5-ish years, but i'd say that i'm still at the "2 googles per command" number for bash.

Some of it stems from the fact that i just don't use it enough, but most of it from the fact that this shit just isn't intuitive. why is -b the flag for key length in ssh-keygen? Why is -v the flag for "don't include" in grep? I have those memorized now, but there is no way they are "intuitive".

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#23
post #21

Why would you even want to make Windows command line better, instead of using a state of the art command line of Linux via a VM running in Windows, if you really cannot escape the Windows realm ?

Because a VM is overkill and won't allow you to interact with the Windows host.

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#24
post #19

I tried both ConEmu (twice) and Console2 in the past, but both were too unstable for regular use. If someone can convince me that the situation has markedly improved, I might try again, but I guess I'll just wait until we upgrade to Windows 10 at my workplace (which they say is any day now).

ConEmu does seem to have gotten a lot more stable in the last few months

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#25
post #20
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The script was 11 lines long (vs 3 lines in Python), it was harder to read and understand. Note that this might be true for one script, and the opposite might be true for another script. Something is saner in bash, something is better in PS. They have fundamental differences (text- vs. object-based), and neither of them is better than the other in all scenarios. (At least that's my experience.)

I think it's worth noting that powershell is .NET object-based. This means you can interact with powershell objects from a .NET language but not, for example, python. To me this is the fundamental flaw of PS. It's a neat idea as long as you stay within their box, within their ecosystem. With Bash you get a wealth of tools because everything can handle text.

> With Bash you get a wealth of tools because everything can handle text.

I think technically it should be no problem to write some package for most programming languages for interopting with .net objects. In this sense about everything could also handle .net objects.

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#26
post #19

I tried both ConEmu (twice) and Console2 in the past, but both were too unstable for regular use. If someone can convince me that the situation has markedly improved, I might try again, but I guess I'll just wait until we upgrade to Windows 10 at my workplace (which they say is any day now).

I have been using ConEmu since December and I am yet to run in issue. I use it with Gow and clink.

What issues did you face?

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#27
I don't use Windows anymore so I don't care much. But, When does Windows offer a terminal emulator with sane character encoding(UTF-8)?

This is 2016, CP932(Shift JIS with IBM extension) shall be abandoned.

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#28
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning Bash is just as cryptic. At least powershell function names have logic behind them.

I've only been working professionally with linux for 5-ish years, but i'd say that i'm still at the "2 googles per command" number for bash. Some of it stems from the fact that i just don't use it enough, but most of it from the fact that this shit just isn't intuitive. why is -b the flag for key length in ssh-keygen? Why is -v the flag for "don't include" in grep? I have those memorized now, but there is no way they…

yeah I also always have to google the -v and them I'm like ahaaa it's inVert! And next time I have to google it again

Re: A Saner Windows Command Line

#30
post #2

At our office we jokingly refer to powershell as "two googles per line" - a term coined by its strongest proponent at the company. It thought it would come naturally over time, but it never does. It seems needlessly cryptic and verbose in so many ways. I've started using LinqPad for stuff I would normally do in cmd now.

I don't really understand this- I always found the "get-help" commandlet to be sufficiently informative, unless they were using parts of the .NET framework that I wasn't already familiar with, in which case I needed to go read about those objects/etc. on my own. Is this that bad?
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