It sounds like we do very similar jobs and feel the same way about Python. I'm 97% sure you're going to stick with your own language, but for others seriously give Ruby a look.
I absolutely adore Ruby as a scripting language. It's so easy and elegant to shell out to bash and do something with the output. When brevity or familiarity with bash is desired, variables like $? are there also (although there are generally less esoteric ways to do things). Running a simple shell command in Ruby is as easy as using backticks and having the output from the command returned to you as a String (and I always add a .chomp to strip the trailing \n)[1]
Example: datestr = `date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S'`.chomp
Also the community is amazing. There are gems for almost everything, and really neat/fun projects like Ruby Warrior: https://github.com/ryanb/ruby-warrior
I'll stop now, but suffice it to say Ruby is one of the best tool sin my belt, and I haven't even mentioned the number of times I've thrown down a simple single-file HTTP service based on Sinatra in record time ;-)
> I'm 97% sure you're going to stick with your own language
Agree with the estimation :)
> but for others seriously give Ruby a look
Of course. Python is not out of the question either. I think it's mostly about alignment of how you think and what is possible to express in the language in a straightforward manner.
> It's so easy and elegant to shell out
That's the area where I think NGS has better facility than pretty much anything else I've seen out there. In NGS, it's the "domain". From the top of my head:
* Short syntax for run-the-command-and-parse-output (currently auto detects JSON but customizable) - like backticks in bash but double-backtick on each side.
* backticks syntax like in bash (but don't strip the last newline)
* Argv facility for constructing command line arguments (if the command is complex)
* Automatic handling of exit codes. Errors throw exceptions and no, not any non-zero is an error.
* ok: option to specify non-error exit codes for particular run of a program
* log: option to log the command being run
I absolutely adore Ruby as a scripting language. It's so easy and elegant to shell out to bash and do something with the output. When brevity or familiarity with bash is desired, variables like $? are there also (although there are generally less esoteric ways to do things). Running a simple shell command in Ruby is as easy as using backticks and having the output from the command returned to you as a String (and I always add a .chomp to strip the trailing \n)[1] Example: datestr = `date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S'`.chomp
Worth noting too is that Ruby also has a fantastic one-liner command line syntax like perl and awk for example. Check out https://robm.me.uk/2013/11/ruby-enp/ and https://benoithamelin.tumblr.com/ruby1line/
Also the community is amazing. There are gems for almost everything, and really neat/fun projects like Ruby Warrior: https://github.com/ryanb/ruby-warrior
I'll stop now, but suffice it to say Ruby is one of the best tool sin my belt, and I haven't even mentioned the number of times I've thrown down a simple single-file HTTP service based on Sinatra in record time ;-)
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/2400/2062384