List as a whole is already summarized in other comments, but one item attracted my attention because it is commonly held attitude: many programmers express scor

List as a whole is already summarized in other comments, but one item attracted my attention because it is commonly held attitude: many programmers express scorn for shell scripting and bash in particular (probably the only shell they heard about). As a result we have a vicious cycle: programmers refuse to learn shell scripting. When they have to write a shell script they produce a crappy one. Problems caused by badly written shell scripts only confirm their belief, that the shell scripting should not exists.