[lapinot]

I don't think bash is feature rich: you have to call a program to do arithmetic! It's BASIC with pipes. If you really want to script in a unix-traditional way you should go for perl i guess. Also: i didn't want to imply going text-mode, scripting probably is going to be keyboard-driven but you may have graphical composition too. Tiling window managers usually get this "graphical shell" right by letting you choose/replace most components (status bar, window decorations, keybindings, launcher-menu, notification viewer). And about learning curve: i think we should really acknowledge that with any tool either you go fast or you go far. I'm not sure what's so unusual about struggling with a programming assignment in first year when for most other things of life it usually takes something from a couple years to a decade to be considered "good enough to stop learning" (or maybe start advanced training) (writing, basic math, music, sport, craft).