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by justeleblanc 1145 days ago
It's just a knee-jerk reaction people have in any thread where powershell is mentioned. "Hur hur long command names." Doesn't bring anything to the discussion.
4 comments

I can see where you're coming from, but to me it's not some meme or joke. I find it similarly annoying in Java, for example, and it makes me want to use that language less. Obviously it's only a small part of the whole consideration.
Every common command has a short alias, or often multiple short alias. Get-ChildItem => "ls", "gci". Get-Content => "gc", "cat". These aliases are standardized, you can look them up with Get-Alias (or "gal" ;) ).

It means that working in the terminal, you can use short commands, and when you write a long-term script, you use the long names so that the script is more readable.

What I find great is that flags also have aliases that are standardized across commands.

This is why I'm annoyed at this meme. It just stems from ignorance.

What’s long in Java? It sure longer than the absolutely insane C convention of snrcph whatever, but these AbstractFactoryFactory things are just memes - the Java convention is to prefer full words, but that’s the same in I believe the majority of languages - JS, Rust, Python all use basically identical names, at most casing differs.
I assume you similarly also find Apple's swift/objc API's annoying. (If not, might want to objectively evaluate bias)
Yeah, it can definitely be kind of a meme, but also I've never had a bad time bringing it up in good faith. A lot of people don't even realize it's a knee-jerk meme response to them. OP also doesn't seem to just be MS bashing, and I think there's a reality that the typical linux/macos dev just doesn't have a compelling reason to sink time into vetting PS, whereas I had a reason to learn it and ended up really digging it.

But I do get what you're saying and think it's a common meme that's often unhelpful

It doesn't bring anything new to the discussion, but if it is the reason people don't use it, then it is relevant.

I don't use it, because I was Mac/Linux at home and Linux at work for so long - only now do I have a reason to.

I think that's important, tbh

I love powerful. I've used it for a long and even though I primarily work on macos/linux now, I install powershell core on everything.

That said, I _started_ using it because I was working on a windows box doing C# and managing windows servers.

There's just not a compelling reason for a dev to learn it outside of personal interest, and I think that's a completely legit mindset, since we all have limited time. I'm even fine with misconceptions--we all have them about something--as long as the person is being a decent human about it (which is why I've enjoyed this thread/comments)

It has its benefits, other people's scripts are very readable, and often you can just guess the correct command without having to look anything up.