I gave several sensible low-level reasons why Unix shells should beprogrammable in WhyShellLanguages . But the higher level reason whyis simpler: shells should be programmable because it helps peoplegrow their expertise.

If doing sophisticated Unix glue things is donewith a separate language, there is a huge barrier to entry; you haveto learn an entirely new language before you can start doing evenrelatively small things. Many ordinary users are simply not goingto have either the interest or the time to invest (especially whenit may not

Here is something that I have come to feel strongly about: things thatreport problems (as opposed to just log them) should have some ideaof root causes and a fault hierarchy. Then when you report thingsyou should report the root cause you've found and only mention theconsequences as a side note, instead of screaming about everyconsequence.

(As a not entirely hypothetical example , it does no good to spam me withnotices about lots of ZFS pools being unavailable when the real problemis that the system