Aliases become a self-documenting interface. Using my aliases, getting exposed to them every time I add a new one, tweaking them, and simple browsing them from time to time is what helps me remember commands.
It saves me brain cycles sort of like buttons on a GUI.
For me, the alternative to writing an `untar` alias isn't that I remember `tar -xzvf` but that I have to google it every time (or scroll through dozens of possible flags in the man page). I'm not untar'ing things every day.
Now multiply that example across all sorts of commands. I never remember the right flags to `stat`. or `column -nts: /etc/passwd` just to quickly see users.
I won't remember that I like the `--show-upgraded` flag sent to `apt-get upgrade` every time. I don't remember that my nginx conf and websites are in `/etc/nginx/` while their static files are in `/var/www/`. When life gets busy and it's a month since my last VPS login, I'll remember my own `disk-space` abstraction instead of `df -h`.
Finally, I'm not a sysadmin. I don't find myself on random machines nor am I writing scripts for wide distribution. When I spin up a new VPS, I curl a gist that even installs fishshell and then bootstraps the rest of my niceties with fish scripts. If I'm lazy, I'll just wget my .bashrc aliases. If I'm even lazier, I'll just curl it like it's a manpage and browse my abstractions. Not much different than using manpages directly.
But actually over time it turns out that I end up remembering what many of these aliases represent.
