I use aliases, too. But an alias for every possible "bookmarked" directory seems excessive. Like this guy [1] in the current thread, I tend to just say x=`pwd` (no need to always `export`). Agreed there is probably a way to set up a shell function `a() {...}` that establishes an alias (or even a shell function) almost as simply, but another problem that remains is that aliases and variables are separate namespaces. So, if you do it the variable way like Zsh then you don't have to worry about clobbering some existing alias or shell function. You do have to keep these separated namespaces in your head, but the updating of the prompt to the variable name is a pretty good reinforcement cue (at least for me, in practice). Also, the variable lets you use it in composed paths like `$x/bin/foo` while an alias/function would only change your directory.

TL;DR - Yuck = namespace squishing in this application only, but then again one man's "collapse of namespaces being yucky" is another's "yay, I do not have to remember 3..4 namespaces!".

EDIT: for what it's worth, I never intended my 9..11 items to be "in order of importance or persuasiveness". Mostly in order of personally driving me batty when I use Bash and just meant to actually be things Zsh could do that (present)Bash could not, to my knowledge due to @deadbunny's complaint. I do try to keep a side Bash config that is as close as possible to my Zsh config, because it's not always worth my time to compile/install Zsh on a system. But when I do that and start using Bash, I notice all these missing things. { That's why I would genuinely appreciate anyone who knows how to replicate them in Bash saying how. I'm not just "daring the Bash apologists to a challenge" or whatever. :-) }

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26177537

One yuck about aliases, it doesn’t give you autocomplete. See abbr in fish shell for an alternative.