[jolmg]

> also it is amazing to me that shells still exist in more-or-less the same form. dear god can I just get a terminal that runs something like Python directly?

There's no reason why you can't set Python to be your shell. Here you go:

  sudo usermod -s /usr/bin/python $USER
  su $USER

You'll likely find that it's not that great as a shell language. Shell languages are made to be primarily used interactively. With Python, you'll have a lot of extra syntax to type all the time. They're also made to glue other programs together. I don't think you'll find it as convenient to use the output of one program as the input of another in Python. Job control will also not be as convenient.

[ajkjk]

Well I don't mean python, it is obviously not a shell. I just mean something like it.