[tom-lord]

Shell/batch scripting can often be useful in the devops world, where you have no guarantee that any additional tools (python, ruby, perl, powershell, whatever) wil be available.

Shell scripts are guaranteed to be runnable on all machines.

Unfortunately the shell "language" sucks, but still...

[kbutler]

So you're running 'sh' scripts, right? none of that new-fangled bash stuff...

Oh, and be very careful of the commands your script invokes!

shell scripts have no guarantee of portability (often less than Python, which has a rich standard library available on all platforms).

[Retra]

Shell languages are great at doing interactive programming. Few non-shell languages can match the convenience, flexibility, and expressiveness in that domain. Of course, in any other domain (scripts) they are awful.

[CaptSpify]

> Unfortunately the shell "language" sucks, but still...

Why do you say that? genuinely curious