I've found Python to be an excellent language for automating systems administration, data processing and other tasks. I never write shell scripts longer than m

I've found Python to be an excellent language for automating systems administration, data processing and other tasks. I never write shell scripts longer than maybe 10 lines or so. Anything larger is better done in a true programming language. Part of the reason is the better defined syntax. For example quoting in shell scripts can be very difficult to get right. Also Python scripts can be made cross-platform without depending on having a full set of Unix tools available. They also support multi-threading and network communications - try doing that with a shell script.