But why would it be a first april article? Are there any arguments to be made for this statement? Because the shell works, I just tested it. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but that's always the case for any given software. The primary reason I use bash over, say, zsh, despite thinking zsh is more advanced, is that I use bash mostly because it is very simple. I like simplicity. (Bash could be even simpler, I would not mind. I don't use shell scripts for instance, ruby or python are much more convenient than shell scripts.)