I suspect shell languages see widespread use because they are optimized for interactivity. The barrier between thinking of an action and making it run is low. A

I suspect shell languages see widespread use because they are optimized for interactivity. The barrier between thinking of an action and making it run is low. At a certain point there is diminishing returns for particularly complex actions, e.g. you call out to awk instead of implementing awk in a shell language all else being equal.