Comment by kubectl_h

> You'll often find that if you write ops scripts in, say Python, it's largely calling external commands.

That's a totally fine trade off for actual sane array/list functionality, robust string manipulation etc. I'd rather form shell commands in a programming language than in bash. People seem to love it.

I do not think for a second though that the average person that "knows bash well" can read and comprehend a multi hundred line bash script written by someone else as fast or even correctly has a seasoned python dev reading python written by someone else.