Comment by crabbone

There are many programs that aren't applications. For example, databases. You wouldn't argue that because you can program in eg. SQL it should be able to make applications with a robust command-line interface, right? Same idea applies to system Shell. Its purpose is to expose the operating system functionality interactively and for ad hoc automation. It is deliberately made simple and therefore incapable of more advanced system programming because complexity creates problems in this particular domain.

For instance, consider that Unix Shell only has one data-type: strings. I believe this was a deliberate decision by its creators (or a stroke of luck). Compare this to languages s.a. original JavaScript with a handful of built-in types, or, even worse, modern JavaScript with user-defined types. Even though the language tries hard to supply default "solutions" to type mismatch errors, it doesn't work well, and sometimes, at all. Unix Shell is inherently incapable of type errors.

While in statically checked programs, or even dynamically checked ones with robust debugging tools types could prevent certain kinds of programming errors, in the mostly interactive programs types make no sense. There simply isn't enough code to generate the kinds of problems types are supposed to solve.

> Minimalism isn't why posix shell syntax is bad.

I never said that.

> Powershell was never designed to be your system shell

Parent wants to replace Linux system shell with PowerShell, that was the reason I replied in the way I did.