Your point seemed like confirmation bias to me. I've been given to use just as many broken bash script as Python. (I'll admit I'm saying that in a false attempt

Your point seemed like confirmation bias to me. I've been given to use just as many broken bash script as Python. (I'll admit I'm saying that in a false attempt at being fair. In my experience, Python script tend to work better. Then again, I tend to work in mixed env which includes Windows OS.) You're mentioning exception errors as if having an explicit error message on failure is a problem, not a plus. What happens when a bash script fails? Or worse, silently fails and leave you with a half-working setup at best and a seriously broken one due to some intermediary step failure being ignored? If you happen to notice the error that is... like the OP pointed out, almost all bash shell script ignore silently errors and figuring which of the hundred of lines fails on your particular setup is a fun exercise. And then... which bash debugger to you use to fix problem in bash shell script you been handed? Ah no, it's long reading and echo and trial and errors.