Interesting points. As a long-time sysadmin; a big fan of Bash, Ruby, and Go; and a bemused observer of "we need to replace the shell!" manifestos like this one, I have long believed that the low-friction of system-level interaction you get from Bash is inextricably linked with its contradictory, confusing, and error-prone syntax. You can't have one without the other. Ruby is one step up the chain. Still easy to get going on a project, much cleaner syntax and more consistent behavior, but the abstraction separates you just enough from the OS that it's no longer trivial to interact with files, processes, and pipes, and instead there has to be an API. Then a language like Go, carefully designed to be as self-consistent and predictable as possible, but the trade-offs are enforced error handling, higher LOCs-to-functionality ratio, and the compilation cycle, and now interacting with OS-level abstractions like files and pipes becomes a major chore, not a magical puzzle of joy like Bash sometimes feels like.<p>I wish the author good luck with his NGS, but I don't think it's possible to make something as direct as Bash that has all the other features the author wants. But more power to him for trying.<p>Although, looking at the Github page, I get the impression the author is writing software to automate AWS deployments after getting fed up with Terraform and CM tools, rather than a Better Shell Language. Maybe it's both, but the 100% AWS example code does not remotely appeal to this AWS sysadmin.