This could really use a short, pithy code example at the start of the readme to show what it looks like. Otherwise, you have to get pretty far into the docs to see any actual commands, or click the example link which doesn’t display well on mobile.

Comparison with Bash, from https://github.com/modernish/modernish/blob/master/EXAMPLES....

# Plain POSIX sh

    #! /bin/sh
    git status >/dev/null || exit
    if ! git diff-index --quiet HEAD; then
        echo 'Working dir not clean' >&2
        exit 1
    fi

    find . -name .git -prune \
    -o -exec sh -c '
        # Ask Git for latest commit'\''s timestamp,
        # formatted for POSIX '\''touch -t'\''.
        timestamp=$(git log --format=%cd \
          --date=format:%Y%m%d%H%M.%S \
          -1 HEAD -- "$1") || exit
        [ -n "$timestamp" ] || exit

        set -x
        touch -t "$timestamp" "$1"
    ' dummy {} \;

# Modernish

    #! /usr/bin/env modernish
    #! use safe
    #! use sys/cmd/harden
    #! use var/loop
    harden git
    harden -e '>1' -f wd_is_clean \
        git diff-index --quiet HEAD
    harden -pt touch

    git status >/dev/null
    wd_is_clean || exit 1 'Working dir not clean'

    total=0
    LOOP find repofile in . -name .git -prune \
    -or -iterate; DO
        # Ask Git for latest commit's timestamp,
        # formatted for POSIX 'touch -t'.
        timestamp=$(git log --format=%cd \
          --date=format:%Y%m%d%H%M.%S \
          -1 HEAD -- $repofile)
        str empty $timestamp && continue

        # 'touch' is traced by 'harden -t'.
        touch -t $timestamp $repofile
        let "total+=1"
    DONE
    exit 0 "$total timestamps restored."

Their `use` shell function should really be `use1` and `use` should process its whole argument list. Then their opening example could be `use safe sys/base` and "dialect tweaking" can be just one line with the option but not requirement to be multiple lines. Just a thought.

Modern cmd line scripting is an interesting area and I like seeing people's different approaches to improving it. Personally, I want to get as far away from writing control flow, loops, etc in Bash as I can. I'm working on https://github.com/amterp/rad which is a CLI scripting language that takes a more Python-like approach, which people here might find interesting, though it serves slightly different cases than Modernish.

It's all written in shell, no other dependencies. This is what so many shells that tried to "revitalize" sh missed! I'll definitely adopt this.

I greatly appreciate these kinds of tools but I always err on the side of what's installed by default wherever possible so I can work across hosts as soon as i land

Perfect name!

Said with love: This is lipstick on a pig.

A very old and beloved pig, but still alas, a pig.

It's great to extend the shell idiom, to patch up its inconsistencies and unportabilites, to make it better. I love the progression of sh, csh, tcsh, ksh, bash, zsh, fish, and others. But it's also Sisyphean. At the end, you still have a shell experience not a programming language experience. And as long as we're talking about programming things, the full toolset will remain more direct, more powerful, more maintainable—and thus more apt.

I hate gol-lumping over the gap between a dashed-off Bash or Zsh script and the Python equivalent (say), but the full language has better semantics, typing, exceptions, modules, data structures, expressive power, and tooling. As the person who not only has to dash off the initial POC but extend and maintain it over time, and someone who's tried both routes, if there's any complexity at all—any datetimes, timestamps, or timezones to be wrangled; any complex JSON to be parsed out of an API; any significant parsing or concurrency to be managed—going to prefer the full tools every time.