Learning a programming language properly usually takes 5 years of daily practice using it to solve real problems.
There is no 'wat' situation for a tool you really are proficient with.
Re:Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes
by RadiozRadioz on Friday July 14, 2023 @10:46AM
(#36724756)
There is a zero percent chance that Bash will be gone by the time you're 30. I recommend you use some of that youthly neuroplasticity of yours to get used to it; it is too valuable a skill to give up on simply because it's "wat-full". It is in part a valuable skill to have precisely because it is "wat-full".
I understand, but I don’t and probably won’t ever code for an employer. And AI assistants can help with the occasional wat syntax e.g. when I need to troubleshoot some software I use. Btw I just switched to fish.
For me, somewhat surprisingly, the best bash resource I've come across is the manpage. If you haven't read this and have instead relied on any other resource, I would recommend spending some time to read the bash manpage before deciding to give up on it. To me this has transformed bash from what I once considered a cryptic ugly mess to one of my favourite languages to write even relatively general-purpose code on.
The help command is the only other resource you need, imo.
How so? I tried to seriously learn Bash a few days ago, and once I learned about word splitting, [[ ]] vs. [ ], "${MY_VAR}" just to properly reference a variable it seemed even more full of technical debt that Wat-full [1] Javascript. I figured it would be obsoleted by a modern shell language alternative by the time I will be 30 (currenty 18), it's not worth it, and gave up. I think the bar should not be Turing completeness for a programming language to be decent.
1: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat