In general "use the right tool for the job" but arguments for Bash: * Succinctness: When you mostly glue together other programs, Bash will often be shorter th

In general "use the right tool for the job" but arguments for Bash: * Succinctness: When you mostly glue together other programs, Bash will often be shorter than Python. * Familiarity/Ubiquity: If you're using a Unix-like you're already using Bash (probably; or another shell that's similar) as your main "REPL to the system". When you wanna automate a thing you can start off with what you've already been doing for that task and go from there. Similar story for experimenting when writing a script, though Python also has a REPL for that.