[sophacles]

Pro - there is still not another language (generalizing to "shell" here) that allows you to easily write a series of commands and/or pipelines as concisely and understandably as shell.

This is the biggest reason to use shell - if your task is shaped like a command line session with a bit of looping or a few conditionals, shell is perfect.

If you start nesting loops or conditionals in shell, then start considering another language.