It can’t break if it were never correct in the first place. Bash scripts are always chock-full of bugs, and only work when everything in its environment is the same. That folder now has two files instead of one? Now it just stops working.

In my experience, they don’t have more bugs than Python scripts. That’s assuming they’re shorter than 50 LOC. Long before my scripts reach this size I convert them straight to Go. That’s the most problem-free strategy.

Pin your versions. Also - to make the equivalent safe bash program compared to a typical python implementation is ... a lot of work. Enough that imo the python version is worth the maintenance.

Pinning versions doesn’t help when the old version of some dependency no longer works with your new OS or hardware.

I mostly only code in Python but this article really spoke to me. I have <10 personal Python scripts that I use heavily for my job, but they are such a bear to maintain.

Meanwhile my two old Autohotkey scripts that I wrote 10+ years ago and rarely touch still chug along perfectly.

The recent deprecation warning message of `egrep` is a prime example that bash scripts can break (depending on stderr processing). They will definitely break once the alias is removed.

egrep has been on a deprecation path for 15 years, and the replacement is incredibly straightforward. Also, I think egrep will generally just continue to work.

I'm not sure what you mean by "recent", but this is more longevity than we get in the node/JS world.

I'm primarily a JS (now TS) dev, who also throws bash at things when it makes more sense, but let's not kid ourselves that it's the same.