Nice old post on writing bash shell scripts. - Tracy

Better (IMHO) advice: write any non-trivial script in Python (or Perl, if you swing that way). - Tudor Bosman

I think it depends on which layer of the system I'm working on and my perception of how heavily/tightly modeled I want this piece -- which depends on how long I think I will need the piece and how much I will build on top of it. If I need to manipulate the system via command line tools for a quick hypothesis or some ops emergency I rely heavily on bash. Pieces of the system that are more long-lived custom ops functionality tend to be Python (and then sometimes bash scripts rely on python programs), for application logic/production code I like Java (static typing + tool infrastructure) and for data intensive operations C and as little C++ as possible. And Javascript for UI. Perl is the devil. - Tracy