I never used pushd and popd. Did not even know about them. But I use autojump it give directories a prioroty numbers and then you just have to type "j pro" and you cd into your projects folder for example.
+1 for autojump since it's already in debian & ubuntu package repositories. Install with `apt install autojump` and add a line to your shell config file to load it. For Bash that means adding e.g. `source /usr/share/autojump/autojump.sh` to your .bashrc. Also works with zsh, fish, tcsh, clink.
pushd/popd are over 40 years old btw. Used to use them in the 90s. I decided invisible states requiring working memory create a cognitive split encouraging user error because you have to maintain the focus of the task and the invisible parts of the tool you're using to do the task.
Well ok, Jef Raskin decided that and I happen to agree with him.
My extension is "anything that requires traversing either taxonomies or invisible geometries is too much to ask." So for instance, tmux splits previous-pane and previous-window into two things so the "last thing I was looking at" now asks you to consider whether that was in a pane or a window[1] ... as if you had taken the time to diligently organize it (traversing taxonomy). Xorg's split of the clipboard into CLIPBOARD, PRIMARY, SECONDARY, CUT_BUFFER0-9 and every program having a different opinion on how to copy and paste into them is another one. And then tools like tmux have their own and tools like vim and emacs have their own. So vim, inside of tmux, inside of ssh, inside of some terminal ... right. [2]
Similarly, the multi-dimensionality of many tiled window managers (where you have up, down, left, right, tab left, tab right, workspace (up/down/left/right) etc ...) is like navigating via hypercube.
It's way too complicated to keep a mental model of and leads to lots of errors. I still use one because there's no other reasonable way to leverage the multi-tasking abilities of modern machines but it leads a lot to be desired. My user error rate is probably over 80%.
I'm sure some geniuses can do it but most people cannot.
[1] I have a fix!
Add this to .tmux.conf
set -g focus-events on
bind-key l run-shell "$HOME/bin/tmux-last switch"
set-hook -g pane-focus-out "run-shell 'tmux set-option @out #{pane_id}"
set-hook -g pane-focus-in "run-shell '$HOME/bin/tmux-last in #{pane_id} #{@out}"
It's still strait jacket drooling insanity, but at least it's a little less.
Probably the actual fix in X would be to somehow route all clipboards through DBus so then the user AND the application can have their own opinions and not have to have a bunch of accommodations for each other.
https://github.com/wting/autojump
just looked at it again it also has a jc command for child directories and commands to open file explorer that I never used.