(I am going to use the word "shell" to refer to posix-sh like shells specifically) I think a lot of this is a (li)nix culture thing. Not liking javascript is

(I am going to use the word "shell" to refer to posix-sh like shells specifically) I think a lot of this is a (li)nix culture thing. Not liking javascript is "cool" in some sense. It's this new fandangled web language, not a "real" programming language in this culture. Shell scripting is not seen in the same light because its older and associated with unix I guess. Not liking newer technologies in general is a thing that I have noticed, like with Rust or even C++ which isn't that new! I do think shells have a better excuse for being bad programming languages than javascript though. Shells are primarily an interface to your computer and not a programming language. I use a shell in a terminal emulator to do most things on my system, like managing files and updating the system, you couldn't easily use javascript for this without writing a shell in javascript. Shells are also much older than javascript, and "newer" shells like bash or zsh need to maintain some level of backwards compatibility. Mostly shell scripts are used for very small tasks and not for writing large programs which is another factor. You do bring up a very interesting point though. I think this idea applies to perl as well. It's interesting to see the difference in how these things are viewed.