It felt less powerful than PowerShell to me, and didn’t feel like it brought anything different to the table that would warrant me to switch. It also has far less tooling and plugin support.

Powershell is powerful because of the deep integration with the .NET ecosystem, and by extension, the OS.

This new shell lacks that, I agree. But I think it's a way harder problem to solve on linux.

What are the features that are done differently, or in other words, why would I choose Nushell over PowerShell?

I'm one of the Nushell developers, and one of the main reasons I joined the project was that I couldn't find a cross-platform shell I was happy with.

PowerShell has a _lot_ of baggage. I don't like a lot of their design decisions (ex: the super verbose naming, the continue-on-error default that makes scripting a pain), and it's unlikely that those decisions will ever be revisited.

I tried pretty seriously to use PowerShell as my daily driver on Linux and macOS 2 years ago and was disappointed. Too many rough edges and Windows-first features.

PowerShell's startup performance is also pretty rough; I was seeing startup times around 2s after some minor profile customization.

I think Nushell addresses all of those points well; it's got nice concise syntax, solid support for Mac/Windows/Linux, and instant startup times. On the other hand, Nushell's less polished+stable than PowerShell; we're still making breaking changes to the syntax+commands.

> the super verbose naming

Isn’t long names but short aliases the pragmatic way of solving the naming problem? “ls” or “dir” is perfect when typing interactive but in a long program I don’t mind typing something longer out.

Startup perf is definitely an issue but otoh that doesn’t feel like a design decision that couldn’t be fixed.

But then you have 2 names to remember.

PowerShell's approach to naming is divisive. I'm not saying it's objectively bad, but I'm in the camp that doesn't like it.

Error messages are great, autocomplete works out of the box, and commands ArentCamelCaseMonstrocitiesOnlyMicrosoft --CouldLove.

> autocomplete works out of the box

> Error messages are great

Some improvements in pwsh would be nice here I agree but they have moved away from the more verbose error messages to a more concise view. I personally prefer if there was something like Python 3.11's new error message in PowerShell.

> autocomplete works out of the bo

Not sure what you mean, autocomplete works out of the box with PowerShell as well. It can even auto complete object properties and methods. You can also adjust the auto completion method to be like the shell you desire; i.e. bash/zsh modes.

> and commands ArentCamelCaseMonstrocitiesOnlyMicrosoft --CouldLove

Sure builtin ones are the `Verb-Noun` syntax but you don't need to follow this if you don't want. You can certainly use snake_case if that's your personal preference.

> ArentCamelCaseMonstrocitiesOnlyMicrosoft --CouldLove

Personally, CamelCase makes more sense than everythinglowercasesmushedinto -onetwothreefourparametersSometimesCapitalised and --sometimesdoubledashed and -Isometimesspacedoesn'tmatter -and --sometimes - "dashlivesalone" --AND -o -- "twodasheslivealone".

Not having used nushell, is that what it is like?

nushell is like most POSIX shell - terse.

   ls | where type == file

The equivalent Powershell for that is..

    ls -file

You don't.

The good thing is you have alternative in case you need it. Performance might be different in specific case.

Well, they were replying to a post that said this is powershell done right. Seems very relevant to ask what the done right part is.

Anybody can say anything, that doesnt mean it should be taken seriously.

"Done right" is probably that it is not done by MS and that it is developed in Rust. That ignores universe of other aspects.

Yes, let's go with your guess instead of trying to get an answer.

Indeed :) I have seen them all (answers).

IDK, my first reaction was that it was PowerShell except worse.