Comment by matu3ba

> Yes, but why is this characterized as something negative?

Unfortunately, the text does not provide sufficient context. Shell are not properly supported in any OS (probably except plan9), since 1. the OS provides no enforcement or convention of CLI API interface (there is no enforced encoding standard or checkable stuff), 2. the OS provides no rules for file names to be shell-friendly and 3. there are no dedicated communication channels towards shells or in between programs and shells.

So all in all, shells remain a hack around the system that is "simple to implement the initials" and is annoying to use and write at many corner cases.

> Shells simply developed features that users required of them.

Cross out "simply" and call it convenience+arbitrary complex scripting glue for 4 main goals: 1. piping 2. basic text processing 3. basic job control 4. path hackery