I specifically and purposefully ignore anything Microsoft. I'm interested in open computing, which Windows and Microsoft exist to spite. I assume Microsoft does everything in bad faith, and that any technology they deploy is ultimately in service of their walled gardens. I refuse to participate; I won't let myself be walled-in, and I won't give them any credibility.
Stability is an important thing. The fact that 30 year old scripts still work, and still can be run, is a testament to the staying power of the underlying technology. That staying power generally means some reduction in cognitive load: I can use the same semantics, principles, and idioms on my phone, laptop, and computer.
That's good.
That's powerful. Contrast that with the JavaScript framework du jour: React today, React with new shiny hooks tomorrow; Svelte a week ago and a week from now; while the boss just told you in an email that the meeting an hour from now regards porting everything to Vue. That's the kind of cognitive load that we're thankfully spared by long-lasting technology.
Now consider PowerShell. It is not an open standard. It is not an open technology. Its steward is Microsoft, of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" fame. It bucks against the long-established norm, so that all the established idioms are useless, while its semantics are just as tedious.
Why, therefore, should I bother putting pilot time into this proprietary flying rug whose engine is more-likely-than-not a cracked bottle of Microsoft semen?
As to whether PowerShell has anything to teach us about shell engineering: meh. It's not as good as Bash at doing Bash-like things and it's not as good as scripting languages at doing scripting things.
EDIT: I figured I'd look to see whether PowerShell is open. Surprisingly, it is! With an MIT license to boot. However, as expected with any Microscum code, it includes telemetry out-of-the-box.
As a matter of principle: I don't like it, I don't trust it, I don't want it. The semantics are ugly and it stinks of Microsoft.
Honestly, if you're going to modify Windows, why not just go Linux? Monkeypatching Windows into a good (useable?) OS seems like more effort for less return than just picking up a distro. The only advantage I've heard people claim for Windows is that "it just works." If it can't even meet your workflow, why bother?
I like Windows. Any hardware just works. Many linux distros are nice but none I tried could handle the diversity of devices as Windows. To get some things done you even need to recompile the kernel, something unheard of in Windows land.
I customize the heck out of Windows with couple of PowerShell scripts. So to get my own "distribution" I need no more then hour or two wait and almost zero effort starting from default ISO install.
I usually have:
1. Recursive windows updater (handles updates and restarts until no updates are available)
If it's productive and you like it, then that's great! I stopped using Windows about 7 years ago; I've slowly radicalized myself to the point where I just genuinely hate Windows as a product and often wish toenail cancer upon its engineers.
I'm realizing how detrimental this is to my emotional well-being, but I still genuinely can not imagine what would entice me back to the Microsoft stranglehold. The fact that you even need to run a debloater (that removes most of the user-facing crud), add a package manager, and empathically tell your OS to shut up... I just don't see the point.
It's adversarial.
Why do I want an enemy for an OS? and even if the OS was friendly, Microsoft certainly isn't, and so: why do I want an enemy's snitch for an OS?
> The fact that you even need to run a debloater (that removes most of the user-facing crud), add a package manager, and empathically tell your OS to shut up... I just don't see the point.
I do this for almost anything. I was doing the same thing when I was actively using Ubuntu, Arch or MacOS as a daily driver. Only I can say what is the environment I work in and its by definition impossible for anybody else to get it right.
> Why do I want an enemy for an OS? and even if the OS was friendly, Microsoft certainly isn't, and so: why do I want an enemy's snitch for an OS?
Why are you skipping relevant bits to confirm your biases ? I was fighting all OSes all the time, I fight Windows only on initialization, and other OSes every freaking week. Why would I want that ?
You don't seem to have healthy thought process around big coorps - I don't work for them, and I don't care about ANY of them. When I switched from Windows to Linux it was because I couldn't see that direction where MS was going was good and OS sucked. I was happy with Linux and learned a lot, but I had frequently to do non-trivial job to get trivial things working (like USB). I returned to Windows few years later when they started their FOSS era, and I am now more than happy.
The truth is, I don't care for ANY OS. I don't care for their desktops, shiny init apps, stupid windows managers, control panels. Fuck all of that. Give me kernel, terminal and browser and let me be, I can take it from there. So basically any OS I use looks the same and uses the same x-platform tools.
This seems more like a perspectivism, egoism, or absurdism than nihilism. Ultimately, nihilism is the position that even any meaning you create is likewise inherently meaningless. To create your own meaning, and maintain that it is meaningful, is a refutation of nihilism, not its embrace.
I find highway driving more relaxing using FSD. It will request lane changes appropriately and then I can just approve instead of having to constantly wonder which lane I should be in to make the exit in time. I have to take over quite often but on the whole it’s definitely made driving more enjoyable. So I use it almost every time on the highway. I bought it when it was 7k and at least half of my motivation was to see how it progressed (since I am in the AI field myself), which it has significantly since then.
For context, this isn't from a player; I steadfastly refuse to run google services on any of my devices, so I'm incapable of downloading your game from the Google Play store. I'll keep an eye out for it, should you ever decide to release the .apk or host it on F-Droid!
Your personal story is nothing short of inspiring. A sincere kudos to you and your husband :) Your children are incredibly lucky to have two such productive role models, and I hope they grow up to see computers as not just tools but as friends (as it seems they were to you in childhood)
To me, computing is somewhere between a philosophy and a spirituality. I'm still very novice, but welcome to the rarefied air of technological wizardry! You had a vision, a meaning in your mind, and you manifested that into the devices of strangers. You created something wholly new and thereby opened a port from the rich inner world of bananabat &co. into the reality of our shared experiences. This capability, to me, is nothing short of miraculous. It was your combined passion and effort that seized upon such miracles to create novel spectacles. As I said: nothing short of inspiring!
Best of luck to you and your family as you continue down this journey! I wish all of you well, and who knows? Maybe in some years from now, someone will post a Show HN with their own project, their passion fueled by Slingshot Effect!
I respect that. Thank you for your very kind words and well wishes. I think creativity is simply the synthesis of all that's past and what's present around you. What we celebrate as originality is mashup. And I think that's absolutely wonderful.
Windows does exist, but it ought not to.