I think that's the point- they're amazingly powerful. Additionally with POSIX, you can assume that the command you used on one OS behaves or at least outputs th

I think that's the point- they're amazingly powerful. Additionally with POSIX, you can assume that the command you used on one OS behaves or at least outputs the same on another. I feel like the interface for these commands is exactly what you'd want from a collection of executables that do only one thing. As for shell scripting, you don't have to use bash/sh/whatever. You could write your script or executable in any language that will let you call system commands, so it's really a non-issue if you absolutely can't stand the syntax. I write plenty of bash scripts and I do feel your pain, they're not usually very pleasant if you have to go beyond trivial use cases- but it's also (generally) not impossible.