> You don't need to keep track of aliases, can just as easily use your "one correct" way and never learn/forget the alternatives, so what's the downside?
Sure if you work in an isolated bubble and don't ever read the docs, google things, discuss with other people (or llms I suppose these days). But that's not really realistic... In practice you will be encountering the variations all the time, and it'll just add friction.
> In general, the overhead of remembering precise tool-specific command is higher that using some common knowledge from other tools you remember that are aliased in this tool
As polyglot developer I simply don't find that to be the case, small syntax differences are not problem, its far bigger problem when I read the docs and see five similar commands and need to figure out if they are aliases, if there are some subtle differences, and if one of those is the canonical choice.
> people (or llms I suppose these days). But that's not really realistic... In practice..
In practice it's trivial to avoid llms and stuff for such simple tools, `tool -h` is pretty often more than enough. This isn't your generic git cli monstrosity
> small syntax differences are not problem
And this discussion is not about small syntax differences, so this isn't relevant. I was talking about your ability to guess a command because that's the command you use in another tool, e.g., use "install" and not get an error because there is only 1 "correct" way to "add"
> bigger problem when I read the docs and see five similar commands and need to figure out if they are aliases, if there are some subtle differences
or "figuring out" could be as big a problem as simply reading a 5-word sentence till the end "install ... [aliases: i, a]", so this makes no sense as a general point.
> and if one of those is the canonical choice.
why would you care about canon instead of using the one best for you? If in your mental model apps are (un)installed, so you always use `tool u/i`, why would you care if the author thinks add/remove is best?
Sure if you work in an isolated bubble and don't ever read the docs, google things, discuss with other people (or llms I suppose these days). But that's not really realistic... In practice you will be encountering the variations all the time, and it'll just add friction.
> In general, the overhead of remembering precise tool-specific command is higher that using some common knowledge from other tools you remember that are aliased in this tool
As polyglot developer I simply don't find that to be the case, small syntax differences are not problem, its far bigger problem when I read the docs and see five similar commands and need to figure out if they are aliases, if there are some subtle differences, and if one of those is the canonical choice.