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Comment by cxr | Hacker News Reader

This is such a bizarre response. A Python* script, to give one example, does not—at least in any meaningful sense—run on "top of a shell". The shell will accept the command string and fork the process, but that has nothing to do with the design of the shell language being discussed here, and the whole thing happens to be incidental, anyway—you could completely remove the Unix shell from the equation by just making the Python interpreter your shell if you wanted, which would sidestep every element of the already-tenuous line of reasoning that you're using here to try to make an argument...

* which I abhor, by the way—just like GNU abhors man pages—but that doesn't make your argument any less absurd

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The shell is everywhere. The commenter trying criticise the shell is probably using it to launch the interpreter for their "proper scripting language" among other things.

In theory, the shell could be eliminated and people could boot into something else. Onine commenters love to bring this idea up. But in practice, this is rarely implemented. The UNIX shell is the overwhelmingly choice. This is not an "argument". It's a fact. The shell and shell scripting are everywhere.

The "proper scripting language", OTOH, is a highly opinionated concept. It will keep changing. A never-ending popularity contest.

Shell scripting is here to stay whether language wonks like it or not.

I don't recognize non-sequiturs and shifting goalposts as valid moves.

he probably meant on the terminal but he's just LARPing like every other UN*X enthusiast. they like to create false dilemmas like "legacy" and "embedded"* to justify their bloated poorly implemented string flinging machine that has another 100KLOC to parse the input line (readline)

imagine someone pitching shell programming today. the response would be: LOL so you mean each language will have a common subset of syntax that supposdely works the same across all of them? how can anyone ever program that way?

* ironically, a big part of why embedded products are so flaky is just because of their shell scripts

The only thing that makes UNIX appealing to me is the fact that I find all the alternatives are so much more annoying. If there is some UNIX alternative that is less bloated and slow, please share.

NB. Almquist shell does not necessarily use readline. Neither NetBSD's sh nor Linux's dash use it. (Not to imply editline isn't bloated, too, but it's not nearly as bad.)

Further, I did not mean "the terminal". I had to look up "LARP". FWIW, I do not play video games. I do not use readline. I do not use a "terminal emulator". I use textmode. These choices are not because I think highly of ash, editline, textmode, non-graphical computing or minimalism in general. They are because I find the alternatives (large scripting languages, readline, video games, terminal emulators) are really annoying.

Why not share some of the programs H4ZB7 has written, so we can see how to do things the right way.

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