Ah yes, I see some clarification is needed.

The BEST programming/script/anything language is:

1) Simple (i.e. only as complicated as absolutely necessary) (python is simple)

2) Intuitive; not necessarily easy to learn. (i.e. implemented logically, syntactically logical, semantically logical) (C is extremely syntactically logical, although semantically it can be a little cryptic)

3) As good as BASH or TCSH (functionally speaking)

I've coded in python and C and enjoy both.

BASH, while ubiquitous, powerful, and useful, is:

1) Unnecessarily complicated. Its like the English language. We think it simple, because we've learned it by rote, but anyone with an objective opinion (and therefore more valuable scientifically speaking) (i.e. a native non-English speaker) will tell you it makes little sense. Imagine how much faster infants would learn to speak if we used a language that was actually designed to be easy to learn ...

2) BASH's cryptic syntax make it look cool, but also make it esoteric, which is a terrible quality for any language to have, as it directly contradicts it purpose.

The PERFECT language would simple require to user to tell the computer what to do, and it would do it. Simple as that. However, BASH is an inadequate stopgap (it's not a good enough alternative in the meantime) Python is much closer, but it's a bit of a pain to write shell scripts in python.

Sometimes I wonder if shell scripts are even necessary, but they so often prove their use, that this though rarely lingers :P

To be honest, I was REALLY hoping someone would say:

"Hey, yeah, why don't you try TPSH (The Perfect Shell) ? Syntactically it's like python, but is semantically implemented via LISP and has features of both. The core functions basically form a wrapper for BASH while the rest incorporate other features like OOP and AOP and more!"

But that event is looking less and less likely ... so I might have to advance beyond basic BASH in exchange for my soul.