>When you program in shell, gcc, git, pip, npm, markdown, rsync, diff, perf, strace, etc. are part of your "standard library".
I don't think this is a good characterization at all... Shell does not have git functionality (for example) built in. That is a dependency just like it would be for a python or rust project.
What I mean is that shell speaks paths, pipes, and processes natively, and you can creatively use tools that are "just there". Example: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/09/19.html
It's an analogy, not a precise statement. It could be made more precise by using Oil as the center of a container-based "semi-distro", i.e. a distro that does everything that's not hardware related.
I guess a little like the complement to what CoreOS was doing (or is?). (This is a project I've been thinking about for awhile; anyone should feel free to contact me if they've done something like that or have ideas. It's related to the dev tools problems described in the blog post.)
I don't think this is a good characterization at all... Shell does not have git functionality (for example) built in. That is a dependency just like it would be for a python or rust project.