[m463]

> Use the right tool for the job.

yes, this. Engineers frequently try to converge everything into the one-true-way and go too far. (I blame this thinking for phones without buttons or touchscreen cars)

Makes no sense to write scripts in C++. I've worked on projects where people have tried to do this, and they end up being more fragile, cumbersome and not that useful.

I think python is ok for cross-platform.

a shell is good for command line/os logic.

seriously a shell script with 'set -e' at the top, and a lot of command invocations and not much else is pretty easy for a group to maintain.