[dhamidi]

I know it's in vogue to bash Bash but I feel that criticism is unfair.

Shell scripting is a victim of its own success: it is _so easy_ to get started that most users get value out of knowing the first one percent and never bother to actually learn the rest.

There aren't many who have read the Bash manual, or know what zsh can do that Bash cannot, etc.

"Shell scripting is a hot, slow mess" is the same hot slow mess that you get wherever the barrier to entry is extremely low (e.g. early PHP, early JavaScript/frontend development, game development with a game engine where you can just click around in the editor, etc).

[skydhash]

There’s also the fact that shell scripting is for automation of what you may do interactively. It’s not for stuff where you want data structures to manipulate in memory. Trying to use it like python is an exercise in frustration.

[jamesfinlayson]

I remember a friend saying they had a university assignment to implement something like a spreadsheet program in bash - I suppose it was to teach them the intricacies of bash but the big takeaway was meant to be - don't use bash for anything too complicated.