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Discussion on: Bash is a terrible as a programming language, but what's the alternative ?

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eduardopazz profile image
Edu Paz

Bash is hard to learn, period. If it was easy, there would be few people complaining about it. If it's famous for being hard to learn, it's hard to learn. It's not about opinion.

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k1lgor profile image
k1lgor

If Bash is hard to learn... Have you opened a Linux distro ever or some Unix at all? If you think Bash is so hard to learn, I can imagine your opinion about Rust, C++, C, etc.

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eduardopazz profile image
Edu Paz

I've been using Unix since 2016 (i guess). Started with Linux due to a crappy notebook that couldn't run windows with 1.6gb of RAM.

Then switched to MacOS in 2021.

Just because you know something that other people often complaint it's difficult, it doesn't make that something less difficult.

It's not about opinion, it's facts. If these tools weren't hard, they wouldn't be famous for being hard!

I see no one complaining Python is hard, for instance, because it isn't!! Compared to Bash or C, of course.

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mechrisreed profile image
Chris Reed

Until reading this post, I had never heard anyone say bash was hard to learn. I've been writing software for 18 years.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

Learning is not the issue, debugging is the issue.

I don't know how many times I have written shell scripts that worked until someone use a file that has a space in it, or something equally stupid...

It's like YAML where you have everything working and then the world falls apart because you have added a space.

And there is this feeling that it will never get better, I did the same kind of mistakes 20 years ago

Apparently OPS people are good at that, but I have PTSD

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mechrisreed profile image
Chris Reed

bashdb.sourceforge.net/

It is just like debugging anything else