Everything in a computer is a stream of bytes... My shell scripts often use tools like jq and jshon to deal with JSON structures, etc. File hierarchies can also be very pleasant data structures.
The kinds of scripts I write would be awkward to have as compiled JVM programs, I think. Shell is just way more ergonomic for me for many tasks.
Data can be meaningfully separated from control and structure in many cases, and failure to do that is a major (perhaps the major) source of security bugs.
You could then also criticize for example HTTP or even TCP for making you turn everything into "bytes".
Shell doesn't enforce any particular interpretation of data. Pipelines simply connect one program's output to another's input. Interpretation is up to the programs.
