What's Happened Since February? | Hacker News Reader

What's Happened Since February?

oilshell.org

66 pointsjpittis20 comments

Seems like a very confusing name for a shell, seeing this without knowing the context I saw 'Oil', 'Shell' and assumed that it was about some oil spill or event with Shell Oil that happened in February I was unaware of. Looks like an interesting project regardless.

I’d say the developer is making their life much more difficult by using such a confusing name, which is a pity because the project looks really interesting.

Agreed. Also mods, please can we alter the title to something more descriptive and less baity?

I wrote a FAQ answering this: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/06/17.html#toc_0

Oil is a promising attempt to make a backwards-compatible but progressively better and more sane unix shell. I look forward to trying it out!

I use unix (linux) every day, what does Oil fix that is wrong with bash/shell? (I am not a power user per se, so genuinely curious what I am missing out on)

Here's a page from the developer explaining this: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/28.html

"Why Create a New Unix Shell?": http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/28.html

If you want just one example, automatic completion in bash uses a bash parser written in bash, incompatible with the bash interpreter's own parser. OSH uses the same parser for both the interpreter and the completion engine. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/issues/208#issuecomment-4496...

The most interesting part for me is MyPy to C++ conversion. I understand it's easier that way. It certainly makes it easier to package Oil. It's a necessary step to bootstrap all the work. Certainly such a conversion tool would be in interests of wider community, so I wonder is there any more movement in the area.

I have a small hope that it will eventually go off C++, because it may be impossible to change mind of significant part of Unix community. But it's all good, because work involved is outstanding already.

A slight tangent: I discovered the Zephyr ASDL (Abstract Syntax Description Language) by looking at the oilshell blog: https://www.oilshell.org/blog/tags.html?tag=ASDL#ASDL

There are interesting posts about the ADSL, as well as about implementing interpreters in that blog. Definitely piqued my interest as someone passionate about language design.

The "Oil Project" was an open-source education initiative run by Marco De Rossi in Italy, ~10 years ago. It turned into WeSchool, a successful education business in Italy.

Why is that website so narrow? It only takes up about 20% of the width of my monitor

mobile first! :D

I think that's actually mobile only

About the same as the main page of this site.

I actually quite like it though. Takes less eye movement to traverse along each sentences.

I think it's a mistake, it's due to:

    .skinny {
        width: 30em;
    }

on `body`. To me at least `.skinny` suggests there's a non-skinny style it should be picking up on non-mobile/small screens, but isn't.

edit: Ah, yes, there is also a `.wider` (not being used) at `45em`.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739

To answer your question directly: because it's more legible and follows sane typographical practices.

Also: why in the nine hells are you critiquing the design of the site instead of talking about the content of the article?

I like it. I can Zoom in 300% and easily read the text with my outdated prescription glasses.

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