Use the proper tool for the job, that I agree with. For most sysadmin tasks, that is shell scripts. Yes you have to be aware of the warts, as with any language

Use the proper tool for the job, that I agree with. For most sysadmin tasks, that is shell scripts. Yes you have to be aware of the warts, as with any language or framework. I would no more want to do system administration with Python than I would want to write a web application server in bash.