[cies]

> Small languages either become big, or are replaced by things that are big, for the same reason most people prefer a car to a horse to go shopping.

So why are shell languages still around? Why are they not replaced by C#, C++, Java or another big (=general purpose) language?

I find your horse->car comparison more akin to the sh->bash->zsh transition. Zsh is not as small as sh, but still it is in the small league is you ask me.

Small does not mean w/o functions, without NS, without map/filter: it means "not general purpose".

[BiteCode_dev]

Shell languages are a very good example, because they have been replaced mostly by bigger languages. First by perl, then by python.

Now a day, most people don't write bash if it must be more than a few lines: it fits niche perfectly, like horse ridding.

But you are not going to do website with bash anymore, server swarm deployment with powershell or build your encoding pipeline in fish. Tasks that we used to do using those small languages, until we found out that we prefer a car to do shopping.

[majkinetor]

> server swarm deployment with powershell

I do this routinely with powershell. Powershell is not bash or fish, its highly usuable in all situations except those that require greatest performance and even then there are solutions for various types of problems.

[williamcotton]

Do you prefer a car or a touring bus when you go shopping? Because making an analogy between a car and horse doesn't really make any sense.

Why not have a niche language for making websites? Or for server swarm deployment? Or a video encoding pipeline?

[tester756]

>So why are shell languages still around?

Are they? I don't use them more than once a year

[mcluck]

I'd say you're in the extreme minority then. I'm not a bash hacker but I usually end up writing a little script for myself at least once a month. Even just doing `command && command` is technically using a shell language

[BiteCode_dev]

So you are using bash once in a while (once a month is not a lot for a programmer) for niche use case (the specialty of bash: short scripts).

Hence, you are making the point "little languages are not the future". It has found its local optimum.

[mcluck]

I said I write custom scripts about once a month. I use bash literally every day. But I also wasn't arguing the future of programming languages. The parent here said that shell languages aren't being used

[t-3]

Still alive and quite well. In fact, as more and more programs are written, they become more and more useful. We're already well into an era where programming can be nearly entirely ignored in favor of merely scripting new behavior out of the interactions between existing programs.

[pjc50]

Shell languages have "must be easy to type in execution order" and "must integrate with random programs on the filesystem" as an overriding consideration. You're not going to get that with Java.

[sargstuff]

gawk compiled via webassembly to allow for running in browser allows 'modern' gui input / output beyond the command line interface while still retaining the ability to be just a cli program.