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Comment by chovybizzass | Hacker News Reader

How does fish compare to zsh? I just switched from bash to zsh and am loving it.

Fish’s strength is in having good defaults that makes it work well out of the box. Fish’s downside is not being POSIX compatible [1] though its creators would argue they deliberately avoided POSIX weaknesses.

If you already have Zsh configured well then Fish probably wouldn’t offer a huge advantage.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_(Unix_shell)#Bash/fish_tr...

For a good default config of zsh I highly recommend oh-my-zsh[0]. I've been using it for years and it's amazing.

[0]: https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh

Fish is a bit like the Mac of shells. Stuff just works and its easy to use while flexible. Lots of little details are well polished.

The downsides are similar to Mac. Less standard/compatible with other stuff. Zsh seems more like a traditional shell. Meaning it is far more complex. Fish really aims to keep simplicity.

I have used Fish for many years and swear by it but I am also not the kind of guy who writes long shell scripts. I use regular programming languages for that. For me fish is mainly about having a shell that works well in interactive use.

I completely agree with this.

I recommend people Zsh: it's very familiar, scripts copied from the internet will most probably work and they have lots of flexibility to adjust it to their needs.

I personally have a Mac with Fish installed, I don't enjoy the process of sharpening my tools, I'm willing to give up flexibility in exchange of great defaults. It's the same reason why after I learned how to use a sharpening stone, I ended up buying an electric knife sharpener.

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