When you solve the dependency management issue for shell scripts, you can also use newer language features because you can ship a newer interpreter the same way you ship whatever external dependencies you have. You don't have to limit yourself to what is POSIX, etc. Depending on how you solve it, you may even be able to switch to a newer shell with a nicer language. (And doing so may solve it for you; since PowerShell, newer shells often come with a dependency management layer.)

> any script that needs those things

It's not really a matter of needing those things, necessarily. Once you have them, you're welcome to write scripts in a cleaner, more convenient way. For instance, all of my shell scripts used by colleagues at work just use GNU coreutils regardless of what platform they're on. Instead of worrying about differences in how sed behaves with certain flags, on different platforms, I simply write everything for GNU sed and it Just Works™. Do those scripts need such a thing? Not necessarily. Is it nicer to write free of constraints like that? Yes!

Same thing for just choosing commands with nicer interfaces, or more unified syntax... Use p7zip for handling all your archives so there's only one interface to think about. Make heavy use of `jq` (a great language) for dealing with structured data. Don't worry about reading input from a file and then writing back to it in the same pipeline; just throw in `sponge` from moreutils.

> The language just plain sucks too much

There really isn't anything better for invoking external programs. Everything else is way clunkier. Maybe that's okay, but when I've rewritten large-ish shell scripts in other languages, I often found myself annoyed with the new language. What used to be a 20-line shell script can easily end up being 400 lines in a "real" language.

I kind of agree with you, of course. POSIX-ish shells have too much syntax and at the same time not enough power. But what I really want is a better shell language, not to use some interpreted non-shell language in their place.

The operating system interface that Unix, BSD and Linux share is called POSIX. The term POSIX is not widely known, so people sometimes make up for it by using "Linux" in-place because it is the most popular implementation.

This explains people who argue that Android is not Linux, despite it featuring a Linux kernel and self-identifying as so: They are intending to say that Android is not POSIX.

We need to make POSIX (as concept/word) more popular.

Considering quitting my mind-melting corporate job to have the freedom of mind to pursue another attempt of starting my own business. So the decision is, what I'm working on. Background: they announced large scale restructurings last week and that could be my chance of getting some money for leaving (region beta paradox in full swing here).

Anyone else?

'Pleaing guilt' means 'taking the blame'. It is not a proof of guilt. So the answer to your question should be: no.