What Python is to Java, Shell is to Python. It speeds you up several times. I started using inline 'python -c' more often than the python repl now as it stores the command in shell history and it is then one fzf search away.
While neither Shell or SQL are perfect, there have been many ideas to improve them and for sure people can't wait for something new like oil shell to get production ready, getting the shell quoting hell right, or somebody fixing up SQL, bringing old ideas from Datalog and QUEL into it, fixing the goddamn NULL joins, etc.
But honestly, nothing else even comes close to this 10x productivity increase over the next best alternative. No, Thank you, I will not rewrite my 10 lines of sh into python to explode it into 50 lines of shuffling clunky objects around. I'll instead go and reread that man page how to write an if expression in bash again.
