The perks of using Oh-My-ZSH

Let me start off by saying obviously this is down to personal preference and I know many people including my colleagues that prefer to stick with Bash. But let me tell you why I like using ZSH with the oh-my-zsh framework and why you should give it a chance to improve team cooperation.

Plugins

Straight off the bat, let's talk plugins. The whole point of oh my zsh is to be a framework for the configuration of zsh. So when you install oh my zsh, there are over 250+ plugins to install to make your life easier. Don't believe me? Check them out here.

If there is one plugin I could recommend however it is the zsh-autosuggestions plugin. This plugin is fantastic. As you're typing in the terminal it will give suggestions to commands you've type previously and if there's a match, you just have to press tab and enter. Less keystrokes needed.

Alias

Most of these plugins give you the ability to auto complete or create aliases for commands. Sure, you can argue "I can just add my own aliases!". You're correct, yes. But think about this. Imagine on a server someone has setup aliases to help the team out. That's great, I love it. Makes my life easier! But you mind documenting these aliases so we know what they are and what they do? I could type alias in the terminal sure, but there could be a whole lot of them. Hell, I might not even like the alias format and decide to create my own one!

So how about we use oh my zsh as it's meant to be used... a framework. This way when setting up servers we could install oh my zsh, the necessary plugins and everyone is on the same page.

One example I'm going to use here is yum. Wouldn't it be great if every server setup had oh my zsh and the plugin yum? That way if I need to install additional packages all I have to type is yi(sudo yum install) Or if I just want to update packages I can just type yu (sudo yum update). Using this framework we can be sure everyone has the same advantage and can learn these aliases through the documentation here.

Themes

I tend to stick with the robby russell theme which is the default, but there's plenty of options to customise the look of your terminal. One I see often is powerlevel9k which you can edit the configuration to your liking such as these examples here.

These themes obviously don't help improve productivity, but what's wrong with making my terminal look pretty?

Conclusion
When it comes down to it, the main selling point for oh my zsh is it's plugins. I know they most likely save me seconds using them, but those seconds add up. So give it a chance. Worst case scenario, you don't get on with zsh and you just switch your default shell back to bash.