Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting that the traditional UNIX text-based utilities are designed for reporting to a user. Using text to generate reports is the most intelligent thing they could have done, because humans universally process text. It's not a superior programming environment, but it's a superior reporting environment, which is helpful when you're trying to reverse-engineer some third-party ELF binary or debug why your sha…
The same can be told of the REPL environments of Smalltalk, Interlisp-D, Lisp Machines, Mesa/Cedar and Oberon. All more powerful than UNIX shell languages while using structured data. Coming from Spectrum, MS-DOS and Amiga, the UNIX shell seemed powerful until I discovered how the development workstation should look like, from the eyes of Xerox PARC.
Amiga REXX should have militated against that view of Unix shells slightly.