Ultimately the point was that shell scripting shouldn't be used for "serious" programming. Yet it has been used for decades to accomplish and automate some of the most important tasks on UNIX/Linux systems. I happen to know and work in several "serious" programming languages, and yet I can knock out a functional, reliable, and understandable shell script in a fraction of the time it would take many people to do the same in X.

Since it's tracking on HN, I'll also point this out: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg...