Umm, no, chaining together 5 or more somewhat arcane single-purpose tools is the unrealistic solution here. If the article was about using ls to just list file

Umm, no, chaining together 5 or more somewhat arcane single-purpose tools is the unrealistic solution here. If the article was about using ls to just list files, and I had said "actually you should use Python's os.listdir() and filter the results by whatever" you would be right. For most simple problems it's correct to use a simple tool. For the overwhelming majority of complex problems you should use a well-understood, well-designed, common general-purpose tool.