For writing on the command-line, yes. For anything over a screenful of code and/or using non-trivial math or non-scalar variables, I’ve found the opposite to be

For writing on the command-line, yes. For anything over a screenful of code and/or using non-trivial math or non-scalar variables, I’ve found the opposite to be true. Python forces multi-line code more but the functionality is so much richer that it’s easy to end up replacing a hundred line shell script with half as many lines of easier-to-read code. Literally every time I’ve done that with a mature shell script I’ve also found at least one bug in the process, usually related to error handling or escaping, which the original author knew about but also knew would be painful to handle in shell.