I can see how a programmable shell was the best thing since sliced bread in the era before ubiquitous Perl, Ruby, etc, but I find myself using the shell for onl

I can see how a programmable shell was the best thing since sliced bread in the era before ubiquitous Perl, Ruby, etc, but I find myself using the shell for only three things. To set up common environment variables, to script one-liners that are too simple to bother with a more powerful language, and to start programs. (Additionally, the OS tends to use "sh" where it wants to guarantee code will run without dependencies outside /bin. But I don't write that myself.) Honestly I'd like to see a shell with less programming features, not more. It should be hella tuned for command line usability, but I don't give a damn if it has a while loop.