Spent the better part of the first-half of the day transitioning into zshell using oh-my-zsh.
The thing that's great about zsh is that a lot of bash configuration data can be moved very cleanly into the .zshrc file, which is the canonical user-customizable startup file for zsh.
The thing that the interwebs doesn't tell you is that if you used Homebrew to install zsh, you need to continue using Homebrew to keep going the distance and making things work.
I tried using git-completions.zsh and git-completions.bash to activate super-powered git completion, and it was for naught. Turns out Homebrew has a zsh-completions package which solves all of this for you.
This moment has been brought to you by RTFM.
Also, getting the right zsh theme working with the right color theme customization for iTerm was its own trickiness. I like Visor-style terminal drop-downs, which had me wedded to TotalTerminal for a few years before researching iTerm to see if that was possible. Since it was, I decided to make the switch right then and there. Sure it was a little bumpy, but it feels good to have solved that pair of issues.
Why am I cutting over to zsh and leaving bash behind after having it be my default shell for 17 years? This is one set of reasons.
While working on a TEDx talk, I re-discovered a very simple idea: Radically different conversations create a new future.
Breaking up my environmental and computing patterns is foundational to having a different outcome (or, to reference the previous post, find a different shore). The more I change stuff up by altering my shell environment, trying out new things, etc., the more I increase my chances of finding those new shores as a software developer. It's also a very powerful baby step for me. I just got a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display and I'm bringing a Beginner's Mind to it. Changing up my software environment is very much forcing me to bring Beginner's Mind to the game.
If I want a different result, I have to take different actions. It's that simple. Even though iTerm2 and zsh was a little hell on the uptake, I am clear it's going to pay off massive dividends.