The shell aliases I actually use

I went through my dotfiles last weekend and deleted half my aliases. The ones that survived have a property in common: I use them often enough that the muscle memory beats the typing.

What I kept#

• g for git, gs for git status, gd for git diff. Touched daily.
• .. and ... for cd .. and cd ../... Touched hourly.
• serve for python -m http.server. Touched once a week. Survived because I never remember the long form under pressure.
• pn for pnpm. New this year. Already lodged.

What I removed#

A long list of two-letter shortcuts I had typed three times in a year, and a clever git function that did something I could now do with one extra flag. Cleverness has a half-life.

The rule I settled on#

If I haven't typed the alias unprompted this month, it does not belong in my .zshrc. The file is shorter than it has been in years. I am still finding things to take out.