> I will never understand a prompt other than "$" or "#"
I agree with that, but some legit useful information in the prompt is the exit status of the previous command. So you may have a slightly less minimalist PS1='$?\$ ' which is typically seen as "0$" unless something went wrong. Another legit and useful information is the number of background jobs (set up to the empty string for the common case of zero jobs). Other information like the cwd, the time or the git branch are of course idiotic.
I agree with that, but some legit useful information in the prompt is the exit status of the previous command. So you may have a slightly less minimalist PS1='$?\$ ' which is typically seen as "0$" unless something went wrong. Another legit and useful information is the number of background jobs (set up to the empty string for the common case of zero jobs). Other information like the cwd, the time or the git branch are of course idiotic.