I have worked with a very large number of programmers of wildly different skills and technical cultures, and never once have I seen someone harming themselves b

I have worked with a very large number of programmers of wildly different skills and technical cultures, and never once have I seen someone harming themselves by trying to overuse a shell. It has always been the reverse: people wasting hours and days doing things that should be automated by two lines of bash scripting. Similarly, the grandparent comment's speculation that it's just a "badge of honor because it's harder" just sounds silly. Maybe if you're 14 and you're trying to convince another ignorant kid that you're 733t. The thing about all these powerful, "esoteric" tools is that the steep learning curve doesn't matter at all across a lifetime career. The investment pays off in spades.