There is also an audience mismatch. Most of the criticism of pipelines is from professional programmers. A lot of the value of scripting, pipes and associated

There is also an audience mismatch. Most of the criticism of pipelines is from professional programmers. A lot of the value of scripting, pipes and associated concepts is low barrier to entry. I agree with the value of strong typing. But I also remember how infuriating it was to learn to work with a type system when I was learning to write code. When I need a quick answer of some sort, iteratively piping crap at a series of "| grep | awk" is exactly what the doctor ordered. Sure, I could bullet proof it nicely and make it reusable by investing time the time to write it in something saner, but there's zero reason to - I'm not likely to ever want to perform the same action again.