There are plenty of contexts where you won't have a compiler today - embedded (optimize for space) and very security hardened deployments (minimize attack surfa

There are plenty of contexts where you won't have a compiler today - embedded (optimize for space) and very security hardened deployments (minimize attack surface). Historically people used to sell compilers - so minimizing installation to dev machines probably was a savings (and in those times space was at a premium everywhere). That said - I am with you, give me any other programming language besides shell!