You have to admit the bash code is less readable to someone who hasn't used those particular CLI arguments or flags in a while (or ever), as compared to someone

You have to admit the bash code is less readable to someone who hasn't used those particular CLI arguments or flags in a while (or ever), as compared to someone trying to read the JavaScript version without knowing much about JS or the library that the code used. You might argue that this is an acceptable trade-off to make to in order to gain terseness and ease of typing. But this is different than saying it's just matter of tool familiarity.