Shell is a very high level language that is undoubtedly bizarre at times. Its routines can be written in any programming language you want without much of a boi

Shell is a very high level language that is undoubtedly bizarre at times. Its routines can be written in any programming language you want without much of a boilerplate or any special bindings, because supporting for command line arguments, environment variables, reading and writing files is a bare minimum that most languages support. It is a tradeoff - it has its immense advantages and a couple of often hard to navigate disadvantages. But the ability to easily compose whatever you want is something you can't ignore. I think the perfect very high level language is closer to shell than to python for example. The power of Tcl/Tk (still it has some big weaknesses) or Rebol/Red is something that I admire. The following statement is probably controversial: shell is more akin to Lisp for human beings. I dabbled at Scheme, but it is harder for me to grasp than Shell, but in the end they are more similar than not. I hold a candle for Oil shell for example.