# Nushell

92 Hacker News commenters recommended Nushell and 15 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1.7 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a modern shell that works with structured data and catches errors before running; the common caveat is frequent breaking changes.

## Why people recommend it

- Works well with structured data (6 comments): "But it might also be worth looking at shells which give you more power over structured data, like nushell." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848579)) "I really like it's general ideas though in terms operating on structured data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564039)) "being able to type ‘ls | sort-by modified -r | take 5’ feels liberating." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696622))
- Full programming language for scripting (3 comments): "Nushell is a lot more than a simple shell script, it's a full programming language. Certainly no markup support builtin though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520330)) "It's the most beautiful combination of the ease of Python, strictness and ergonomics of Rust" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46532668)) "nushell is more like a general scripting language — much more flexible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46539142))
- Catches errors before scripts run (2 comments): "It catches most typos before running the script, which is a godsend when the script is slow and/or has destructive operations." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528590)) "With some practice it was far reliable than weeding out errors from bash scripts." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50149011))
- Many useful features built in (4 comments): "Nushell is great because it is really "battery included" in the sense that it ships with most of what you will ever need" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47404514)) "It lets me one-liner so many things that would have previously taken breaking out a "real" language to do" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46526221)) "The speedup is wild, and along with it comes many nice quality of life features." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46530128))

## What people warn about

- Breaks often; compatibility problems (3 comments): "nushell and fish, which have nicer syntax but I've had compatibility issues in the past" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919197)) "Each releases breaks something, usually, and it’s been like that for a few years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46530955)) "nushell will probably break everything that expects a normal bash/zsh/fish" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46535403))
- Bugs and poor error handling (3 comments): "mishandles basics like it will eat errors and get into impossible code paths on control-C" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46939005)) "Nushell pukes on it, errors out, and doesn't even show the output of the command" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46381698)) "These bugs have existed for so many years I've 100% given up on Nushell." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46535621))
- Learning curve, little gain for Bash users (2 comments): "it just feels like I'm learning a new programming language for no good reason" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46526674)) "I don't think Nushell brings much benefit for folks who already know Bash" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46527316))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Bash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bash.md): 171 recommend
- [PowerShell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/powershell.md): 156 recommend
- [fish shell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fish-shell.md): 97 recommend
- [zsh](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zsh.md): 52 recommend
- [Xonsh shell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xonsh.md): 15 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Nushell", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nushell/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).