Shell scripts are readable by just about anyone, they're available on every UNIX system, not just the Red Hat/Debian-derivatives of the last twenty years, they're fast as long as you're not doing stupid things, they're easily maintainable, they don't handle dependencies terribly (unlike Python), and so forth.
There's a reason AT&T used to run ads that showed their secretaries, managers, and so on using and writing shell scripts and there's never been a Python ad claiming that just anyone could write it.
I don't think that's a far comment. It was a different era with different expectations about computer user. The equivalent these days would probably be Excel macros
There's a reason AT&T used to run ads that showed their secretaries, managers, and so on using and writing shell scripts and there's never been a Python ad claiming that just anyone could write it.