For #3, shell is a language for dealing with processes and the file system. And that's exactly what you need to bring up servers / containers / cluster manager

For #3, shell is a language for dealing with processes and the file system. And that's exactly what you need to bring up servers / containers / cluster managers like Kubernetes. Also stuff like OpenStack and distributed file systems. Shell is universally used to automate these projects. I think you need to actually do it to have an appreciation for this. Other people here have made the same points I'm making, but if you don't try it, you won't viscerally understand it. I would just caution against the attitude of assuming that people who use a tool you don't like / don't want to learn (understandably) are using the wrong tool for the job. As mentioned I should write a blog post called "Python Is Not an Acceptable Shell", in part based on this post, which is very in detail, but I think proves the opposite point: https://medium.com/capital-one-developers/bashing-the-bash-replacing-shell-scripts-with-python-d8d201bc0989 https://medium.com/capital-one-developers/bashing-the-bash-r... Of course, bash has significant downsides for this task too. That is why Oil exists!