January 7, 2026
Shell shock, anyone?
The Case for Nushell (2023)
Fans say it’s a joy, skeptics spot weirdness, and PowerShell crashes the party
TLDR: A blog urged people to try Nushell, a modern command tool, and the comments exploded: fans love its ease and smarts, while critics flagged weird command behavior, missing features, and tough keybindings. PowerShell loyalists chimed in, arguing it already solved this problem—making this a lively battle over the future of the terminal.
A blog made the case for modernizing your terminal with Nushell, and the comments turned into a full-on Shell Wars. One camp is glowing: user xpe gushes that Nushell is “a total pleasure” and even prefers writing scripts in it over Python, thanks to smart, editor-style hints. Cue confetti and heart emojis.
Then came the plot twist: a mini-meme erupted when someone tried “[1 2 3] | sum” and got a checksum instead of 6. The fix—“math sum”—sparked jokes about “the sum that isn’t sum,” facepalms, and a reminder that old-school commands still lurk under new layers. It’s the perfect newbie gotcha: funny until it bites you.
Meanwhile, PowerShell strolled in like the cool ex that went cross-platform. One commenter claimed people have been “sleeping on PowerShell,” praising its data-first smarts. But not everyone’s ready to move: reedline (the input engine Nushell uses) keybindings reportedly “blocked me from moving to it.” And the sharpest jab? A Nushell fan said “the lack of proper types is painful,” while another asked if shells are just polishing an “ill-posed question.” Translation for non-tech readers: this is about whether terminals can grow up, or if we’re just putting glitter on very old tools.
Key Points
- •The article advocates reassessing Nushell as a modern shell alternative and questions user inertia in shell adoption.
- •It surveys bash/zsh, fish, and PowerShell, detailing their histories, features, and scripting examples.
- •Bash is ubiquitous across Linux; macOS switched from bash to zsh, and bash is often confused with POSIX compliance.
- •Fish offers improved interactive features and more readable scripting out of the box compared to bash/zsh.
- •PowerShell (released in 2006) passes objects via a .NET engine; it was Windows-only initially, with current cross-platform support missing some earlier features.