[AndyKelley]

> Install perl/python/ruby and nodejs -- requiring just the shell to be installed?

I just meant using any one of them, not all of them. And you can pretty much always rely on python and perl being installed.

But my point is that if you're doing something other than a one-off thing, then it belongs to some project and you're probably going to commit that script to that project's codebase. That means it has to be maintained. Do future you and whoever else has to maintain the project a favor and use one of the popular scripting languages that has reasonable syntax and semantics.

[e12e]

Many minimal distributions have only the shell installed - which make it (still) relevant for provisioning/bootstrap etc.

Personally I'd much rather maintain a shell script than a perl script - but that's just because I know shell better. Maybe shell is the first language people would program without learning it (js being the second)?