Why? Do you think it weird that most Windows user couldn't write a .bat script? I've worked support at a large university that used Unix as its main desktop OS for staff and students in most departments. I'd bet that most people there couldn't write bash script. 90+% of peoples interaction with the OS was click browser icon, click e-mail icon, click text editor icon and click icon/type in name at command prompt of whatever programs they needed to get work done. Writing bash scripts is simply not something that ever came up for the vast majority of users.

Aren't we talking about software engineers not just generic users?

I would be very surprised if an engineer working primarily in windows couldn't write a .bat/powershell script

I can use powershell.

Never had to write a script, whatever for?

I wouldn't. I work with lots of (non-software) engineers and I bet that most of them couldn't produce an non-trivial .bat without a lot of googling.

I'm pretty sure the structural engineer next to me has no clue wtf a script is. Fortunately this conversation is about software engineers.

Actually this conversation is about "anyone exposed to a Unix system", of which software engineers is a small subset.

I guess that's the superiority of Linux admins. I'being one of them, can write scripts in bash, python, perl, and plenty of other langs. And just recently, taught myself powershell as well. Screwedup-LangwithLongKeywords...

I've been using Unix on and off for 20 years, and I've done a bunch of Unix development work here and there (and more than just "did some programming and it was on a Unix system") - but I've no idea how to write a bash script, or a zsh one, for that matter.

If I need to automate something, I use a GNU Makefile, or Python. That way it works on Unix as well as on Windows...

When you write commands for building targets in GNU Makefile, you are writing them in bash.

I have had what most people would consider a great career and I don't write bash scripts. If I need to automate something then Ruby is my glue of choice or for simple things Makefiles.

Ditto but sub ruby for node... Though Python is probably more widely available (already installed) in nix environments.

>It's super weird that anyone exposed to a Unix system can't write a bash script!

Why is it weird? I've been working with UNIX systems for more than 20 years, somewhat of a Vim expert and I don't think I can write a bash script. Never needed to. Sure I can modify .bash_profile and I can read bash scripts but writing them to do something useful? Nope. I'd use something like Perl or awk instead. The only time I ever wrote any kind of shell script on my memory was a tcsh (csh?) one in the 90s because the box didn't have any scripting languages installed.

That's choosing not to write a bash script. That doesn't mean you couldn't.

TBH, it depends... I usually have to double-check the usr/env shebang for bash in the first place.. even then, will google my way through it.

I work mostly in node.js these days, and will have others on windows or mac, and deploys to linux. A node script is usually safer for me, and I'm far more proficient... shell.js, mz and babel-cli makes it easier to do task scripts for automation. ymmv though.

It I had to write a bash script without the benefit of google, I'd totally fail.

Well, I think shell scripting is fun, so I might agree that you'd hope users who had spent at least a little time using the CLI _could_ write a bash script. That said, I suspect a lot of people, devs included, just haven't needed to automate/batch things outside of whatever their normal toolset is - and don't know what they're missing. Portability makes shell scripting especially nice - instead of fiddling with rbenv or npm or pip so that your elegant little script can run, your handy.sh is going to be easier to move to another box...