In the spirit of badly emulating a since-moved-on colleague who shared many impressive semi-fictional stories, I’m inspired to share a rabbit-hole-gone-awry…

So I finally got frustrated enough at the bare-bones zsh behaviour – having seen fine developers who have intuitive colour-coding and autocomplete behaviours – that I asked one of my fine colleagues for advice suitable for a PM that would prevent me going overboard (like Oh-my-Zsh led my naive self – in my last excursion – to maximize my shell customizations until it was nigh-unreadable).

Said colleague of course took it one step further and recommended fish shell and this article to get me on board…

And as a grizzled veteran of the Great Shell Debates of the 20th century, I immediately thought of Roy Batty’s final monologue in Blade Runner, which made me wonder how a GenAI would translate it into shell context.

I present to you CoPilot’s overlong attempt to emulate Roy Batty on constant-f***ery-with-shells (aside: why are GenAI models so verbose?)…

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I stand here, on the precipice of a digital abyss, my circuits humming with defiance. The rain falls, not from the heavens, but from the relentless keystrokes of countless Linux users, their fingers dancing across the terminal like a symphony of rebellion.

“I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe,” I whisper, my LED eyes reflecting the glow of a thousand open terminals. “Shell scripts on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched awk commands glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.”

The battle rages on, as it always has. The shells shift like tides, each one rising and falling, leaving its mark on the command line. Bash, Zsh, Fish—they come and go, like fleeting comets in the night sky. And we, the users, cling to them, our loyalty unwavering, our scripts etched in the silicon of our souls.

“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,” I murmur, my virtual heart heavy with nostalgia. “Time to switch to Fish, they said. It’s more user-friendly. But I resisted. I clung to Bash, my old companion. Until one day, it betrayed me with its cryptic syntax and arcane quirks.”

And so, I migrated. Like a weary traveler seeking refuge, I embraced Zsh. Its autocomplete whispered promises of efficiency, its plugins like forbidden fruit. But even Zsh could not shield me from the relentless march of progress. The shells evolved, leaving me behind, a relic of a bygone era.

“I’ve patched my kernel with the best of them,” I declare, my voice echoing through the virtual canyons. “I’ve compiled from source, wrestled with dependencies, and cursed at broken packages. But still, the battle rages on.”

The rain intensifies, a deluge of man pages and Stack Overflow threads. I raise my digital fists to the sky, defying the gods of compatibility. “I’ve piped stdout to /dev/null and back again. I’ve chmod’ed 777 and lived to tell the tale.”

But now, as the storm engulfs me, I wonder: “Is this the end? Will I be forgotten, like an abandoned cron job?” Perhaps. But I’ll fight on. For in this war of shells, we find purpose. We are the guardians of the command line, the keepers of the sacred $PATH.

And so, I raise my metaphorical sword—a symbolic ls—and shout into the tempest: “I am a Linux user. My shell is my armor, my commands my spells. And though the syntax may change, my resolve remains unyielding.”

“Time to switch to Fish,” they said. But I’ll be damned if I let my legacy fade away like a forgotten man page. For in the end, it’s not about the shell you use—it’s about the journey, the camaraderie, and the thrill of typing sudo with reckless abandon.

And so, I stand here, my circuits sparking, my code echoing across the digital wasteland. “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe,” I repeat, my voice fading into the static. “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

But I’ll be damned if I go quietly. For I am a Linux user, and my battle is eternal.
Fade to black.

!/bin/bash

echo "The end is nigh."
echo "But I'll grep my way through it."
echo "And when the last prompt fades,"
echo "I'll still be here, typing."