```

He proceeded to explain that if he could recreate many of the techniques we showed all as part of a C++ library that people could use. At this time, I wasn't sure how to respond other than "but you don't have to, we already built this language" but he couldn't be swayed. If it wasn't C++, he didn't want it.

Fast forward a couple years, and I'm standing in front of a JavaScript audience giving a similar talk, this time promoting TypeScript. I remember the kind of politely confused looks on people's faces as I showed off the features TypeScript offered. There was a similar sense of "why do we need to leave JavaScript?".

To answer whether Nushell can overcome this kind of inertia, I'll pose two questions:

    Is Nushell compelling enough for a single person to adopt it?
    Would adopting Nushell broadly as a community move the needle?

To the second question: would adopting Nushell broadly actually improve things noticeably? Without a doubt. I say this without any reservation. Thinking of our shells as structured, interactive processing engines opens up the doors to a much wider array of things you can do with them. The commands would be far simpler than their POSIX equivalents and would compose far better. They'd benefit from the full knowledge of the data being shared between them. Adaptors could be made to connect to all parts of the system, allowing you full, structured interaction with everything you have access to.

```

I enjoy nushell, but I am far far far from the average user/target audience. I do not sys admin or anything like it, I mostly use it to quickly navigate the filesystem and, with nushell specifically, occasionally to work with data i've gotten from other things. I haven't gotten quite to the point I would write scripts in it yet, but at the point i'm considering throwing up an FSX file or going into a repl, I like that I might just be able to use nushell instead for the smaller tasks.

Is this useful? To me, sure, to everyone else, hell if I know.

edit-

Article even touches on this mindset:

> I don't need to do heavy data processing everyday, but it's nice to not have to shift what I'm doing at all when I need to do it. I don't have to download new utilities or switch languages. It's all right there. Need to write a script to load some files and handle some directory processing? Still right there. Need to throw together some web query that outputs the top download results for a github repo? You guessed it, all still right there.

The C++ library and Chapel were solving the same problem, but Chapel (in the author's framing) did it better. Javascript and Typescript solve the same problem, but Typescript (in the view of people who care about type systems) does it better.

Nushell is not trying to solve the same problems as a shell:

> Nushell is really an interactive, data-focused scripting language with shell capabilities.

Great, but that's not the problem I give a damn about. If I want an interactive, data-focused scripting language I will use Python. And against Python, Nushell is not nearly as attractive.

Nushell is trying to blend two domains, shells and programming languages, which I see distinct advantages in keeping seperate. I do not want the world to be built on the back of shell scripts, regardless of how good you make the type system. I do not want to ask more of shell scripts and view that as a negative.

Nushell is already a great improvement over bash _as a shell_. It is even better when using it to compose _preexisting text based programs_. I would say it is better in every way I can think of, except for: - not (yet) coming pre-installed, and - stability of interfaces and language.

Its already better enough to be my default shell on my daily driver, though I keep bash around because some things really assume it. I very much look forward to one day having a userspace with no traditional shells at all.

nushell is not yet a strict improvement over python, but it might one day be, and it is already better at: - munging text, json, dates and tables - quickly creating nice CLIs callable from the shell (even if that shell isn't nu!) - fun of programming in it

> Nushell is trying to blend two domains, shells and programming languages, which I see distinct advantages in keeping seperate.

Interesting, though, how many PL features the most popular shells tend to have...

> I do not want the world to be built on the back of shell scripts, regardless of how good you make the type system.

If I had read that before knowing nushell, I would strongly agree. Yet, it turns out you can make a shell so good I wouldn't mind if... not the world, but _a lot more_ was built on it.

That's the mindset behind us still having crappy shells...

there is a lot of overlap though, as a good interactive shell does benefit from a better language syntax and from things like types, arrays, etc.

No, I made the claim that people who think shells and "real (sic) programming languages" are distinct categories, and can't be otherwise, and use it support the idea that current shells are fine, are the reason for bad shells.

>sure it is possible to have both, but the focus of the shell needs to be on interactivity

As if those are contradictory goals?

A shell can have a much much better real programming language AND BE interactive.

>i don't at all care if the shell has a good programming language. i only care about good interactive features.

Hence my false dichotomy complaint.

As if those are contradictory goals?

not as if they are contradictory, but as in what is more important.

nushell appears miss a few features that are important for interactive use. but for a shell to be useful its interactive features are just as, if not more important.

the reason we still have bad shells is actually compatibility of scripts. so those people who prefer real programming languages are not the problem. they don't write shell scripts. those who do and insist on being compatible with a bad syntax from 50 years ago are.

What if the typedness of the shell made the interaction better? Can you make an argument that this does not hold? The article does make a good argument in favor

NuShell might be a great REPL, I don't know, don't really care.

The fact no one uses a REPL as a shell, and there's no demand to add direct exec() to REPLs, demonstrate they're different categories.

Let programming languages do what programming languages are good at. Let shells do what shells are good at. Please do not write programs in a shell. Do not create a half-assed programming language in a shell to encourage people to write programs in said shell.

Some REPLs have nicer interactive features (such a completion than others). Some REPLs have nicer or more powerful syntax or different data types. But as longs as you have a Read-Eval-Print-Loop it's a REPL.