[thegeomaster]

I have to take a moment to thoroughly agree with you on the shell sentiment, although it's not quite on topic. My zsh has always been my most reliable and used tool. Almost every piece of software I've ever used has caused me some headache---GNOME, Firefox, even vim, you name it. zsh never froze, or screwed up my work due to a bug, or anything like that. It always follows what I tell it to do with almost annoying diligence, and if I don't get the result I wanted, I know it's my fault. I've never liked using graphical file managers or, God forbid, some graphical renaming tool, to name an example off the top of my head. I feel immense power when I'm at my shell, because whenever I want to manipulate stuff---from the directory structure, to chaining some commands together to achieve a task, convert audio between formats, getting some quick info out of big files, etc., I always do it using the shell (well, and also the coreutils, sed, awk and others, but I believe my point stands). I know it's a basic thing that all people using Unix systems do and don't think much about it, but the amount of complex things it can do while staying so minimalist sometimes blows my mind. To me, the simple yet powerful text interface feels almost Zen. And although many shells have come and passed, each with its own quirks and weirdness, the underlying principles have barely changed. It's just that perfect. So here's one for the shell: the quiet hero of Unix :)