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by jjav 1330 days ago
> Even they get rewritten and updated and 'bloated' all the time.

"All the time" is a stretch. The basic UNIX commands date back to the 70s and while they have grown more and more options over time, change is slow (which is a wonderful thing, to be clear). Yes, there was grumbling when GNU started adding even more options but even that is now decades ago.

As a consumer of the tools (whether by hand or by shell script), they provide a stable base to build on. I have some shell scripts from ca.1990 which still work fine. It's very pleasing to be able to build on top of a solid foundation that just keep working for a long time.