[mbrock]

Testing might be less of a common practice for quick shell scripts, but it can be done and there's nothing particularly difficult about it, compared to other languages. Especially with "pure" scripts that don't revolve around system effects... which is the case with other scripting languages too.

As for static typing, agreed, though considering that shell is basically a scriptable FFI, real static typing would probably add a lot of complexity? Attempts at "typed shell" don't seem to go over well, maybe due to "worse is better" dynamics.

BTW, re: testing shell scripts: https://github.com/sstephenson/bats