Unix used to be about simplicity, and the composition of simple tools to achieve very productive outcomes. The shell was a part of that: learn it once, and you

Unix used to be about simplicity, and the composition of simple tools to achieve very productive outcomes. The shell was a part of that: learn it once, and you could do more-or-less anything with a Unix system. Including manage system startup and shutdown. Linux has never really had that culture of finding the most concise but most general solution to a given problem. The results of that are everywhere, but systemd is a prime example. To be fair, the world is not as simple as it was when Unix was designed either, and that's only partially because the Unix philosophy hasn't been widely adopted.