[adrian_b]

Thanks.

I use a rather complicated zsh prompt, complicated enough so that I could never convince bash to execute an equivalent prompt correctly, despite the fact that the features used by the prompt are supposed to be supported in bash too.

(The prompt syntax is quite different in zsh and in bash. This is the zsh syntax of my prompt:

  PS1=%F{cyan}"[%T %n@%m:%~]"$'\n'%#%f

)

As you say, to be able to write the prompt I had to study carefully the zsh manual.

However, I consider this a minor disadvantage, because I have written the prompt many years ago, when I have switched from bash to zsh, and I have never had any reason to change it.

I agree that for rarely used features it is more likely to be necessary to search the manual for zsh than for fish, but for me this happens seldom enough to not consider it a decisive disadvantage.

[kstrauser]

I do get that, and thought that way too at first. In my case, I found that it being so trivially easy to do these 2 things made them things I did more often. Go ahead and make a thousand convenience scripts and aliases for whatever mischief you want to get up to. There’s no measurable effect on startup time between have 1 autoload function and 1,000. Because it’s free, and so dead simple to do, I never avoid it anymore. There’s no worrying of my startup script’s getting too long and slowing things down, so there’s no downside to doing the things that make my life easier.

For me, it unlocked a completely different mindset. Fish isn’t for everyone, any more than chocolate or steak are, and that’s cool. I’m glad we have options.