[hardcoreluddite]

"Any one language cannot solve all the problems in the programming world and so it gets to the point where you either keep it simple and reasonably elegant, or you keep adding stuff. If you look at some of the modern desktop applications they have feature creep. They include every bell, knob and whistle you can imagine and finding your way around is impossible. So I decided that the shell had reached its limits within the design constraints that it originally had. I said ‘you know there’s not a whole lot to more I can do and still maintain some consistency and simplicity’. The things that people did to it after that were make it POSIX compliant and no doubt there were other things that have been added over time. But as a scripting language I thought it had reached the limit."

From an interview with Steve Bourne in 2009.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/279011/a-z_programmi...

[plonh]

Bash went too far though. For example the utter disaster that is arrays, that cause far more trouble than they help.