# Why I Built Dush

The terminal is my home, but Bash has always felt like a guest who stayed too long and forgot their manners. Don't get me wrong—Bash is legendary. It runs the world. But have you ever tried to remember the difference between `$@` and `$*`? Or spent an hour debugging a script only to realize you forgot a space inside a `[` bracket?

That's why I built **Dush** (Dumb Shell). It started as a weekend experiment to see if I could write a simple command runner in Go. It ended up becoming a full-blown shell with its own scripting language, a Pratt parser, and a philosophy of "explicit is better than cryptic."

## The Frustration

Bash syntax is rooted in the 1970s. It was designed for a world where every byte of memory was precious and every keystroke counted. But in 2026, we have the luxury of clarity.

In Bash:

```bash

if [ "$VAR" == "val" ]; then

echo "equal"

fi

```

In Dush:

```bash

if (@VAR == "val") {

echo "equal"

}

```

Dush replaces the `$VAR`, `${VAR}`, and `$(VAR)` madness with a single, unambiguous sigil: `@`. If you see an `@`, you know it's a Dush variable or expression.

## Why Go?

Go was the obvious choice for this project.

1. **Static Binaries**: I wanted a shell I could drop onto any machine without worrying about dependencies.

2. **Standard Library**: `os/exec` is powerful, and `io.Pipe` makes implementing pipelines almost trivial.

3. **Concurrency**: Job control and background processes are much easier to manage with Go's goroutines and channels.

## From Wrapper to Language

What started as an `os.Stdin` scanner wrapping `os/exec.Command` quickly grew. I realized that to truly improve the shell experience, I needed a real language. I implemented a **Pratt Parser** (Top Down Operator Precedence) because it handles expressions beautifully and allowed me to add features like method syntax:

```bash

@name = "fezcode"

echo @name.upper() # FEZCODE

```

## More Than a Scripting Language

Dush isn't just about scripts. It's about the interactive experience. I built a modern `ls` directly into the shell with icons and colors, implemented a customizable prompt system similar to Oh-My-Zsh (but faster), and added cross-platform job control.

Dush is still "Dumb" in name, but it's becoming the smartest tool in my kit.

Check out the project on GitHub: [https://github.com/fezcode/dush](https://github.com/fezcode/dush)