Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This is a really neat project. But the website undersells it. It took me until reading the docs to understand that this is an alternative to many raw Windows utilities / PowerShell commands, which (to me) are notoriously hard to remember and have goofy capitalization.

For example:

    update
Instead of

    wuauclt /updatenow

Or, to enable Windows Biometrics:

    install feature biometrics
Instead of:

    dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:Biometrics
Really, really great. But both the landing page and the About page desparately need a "quick to see" example of the project. I didn't even read past the first paragraph in the About page, to be honest. Make it prominent what the app is right away on the splash page.

Edit: The new About page is much better!



Your examples aren't Powershell commands, they are Windows command line utilities and could be run from command prompt. Real Powershell commands are quite intuitive, support pipelines and are object driven. Give it some credit! For example:

Install-WindowsFeature Biometric


Also, PowerShell comands themselves come with aliases, like cls for Clear-Host

And it's not arbitrary reason . PowerShell is closer to a OOP language than other shells.


Not only that, but aliases are also guessable as they are created using the same pattern, one or 2 letters for noun and usually 2 for verb: rjb Remove-Job, etsn Enter-Session, gc Get-Content, gps Get-Process (but also ps for historical and even more discovery resons)

In my book, anybody complaining about terseness of powershell knows 0 about it and should be treated as ignorant. Give me a random bash command and I will probably make it shorter in Powershell without any custom made mumbo jumbo.


Thanks. I updated my post. I don't really do Windows command-line, so it's easy for me to conflate the two.


Is that really really that great?

It is a collection of syntax sugars, anybody can make one in an hour. Here is mine:

* https://github.com/majkinetor/posh/tree/master/MM_Sugar

In it you can see things like `groups` in `Show-Group` that can be used to show Windows groups you belong to, or typical linux commands for machine restarting in Shutdown.ps1 (halt, reboot...) and something I use zillion times a day:

    function Enter-Parent  { cd .. }
    function Enter-GrandParent { cd ..\.. }
    sal ..  Enter-Parent
    sal ... Enter-GrandParent
Aim of the project is probably to have more standardized syntax sugars rather then each person inventing their own...


Or you could just create an alias for commands you use often.

For that second command Install-WindowsFeature Biometrics is almost as long and you're tab completing anyway.


Thank you for the excellent feedback.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: