I would choose bash, but the syntax is just too awkward for me. I feel comfortable with parentheses, curly braces, freeform whitespace, etc., if/else, do/while

I would choose bash, but the syntax is just too awkward for me. I feel comfortable with parentheses, curly braces, freeform whitespace, etc., if/else, do/while, foreach, etc., and that's how I write my Perl. I sometimes call it "PHP style Perl", because most of the code i write can be copied and pasted almost verbatim between PHP and Perl, and I use this to my advantage. I don't use PHP a lot, but I do find it one of the most convenient ways to duct-tape things to a web server. On the whole, I've settled on a strategy of writing most code in such a way that it could have been written (with perfect foresight of the future) 20 years and go and have worked the whole time. I think of it as exploiting the Lindy Effect to my advantage. :)