What is Amber?

I agree, but I can envision scenarios where you are integrating into someone else's workflow/machine and they (or their build system etc.) are expecting a shell script. Python is ubiquitous but sometimes you just want to work like everything else.

One reason is that Python is not built-in on macOS anymore, so it's hard to justify using it for management scripts. Particularly when you do not have control of the execution environment to begin with. I've written some obnoxiously complicated bash (or zsh) scripts because I want to make sure it will run on a vanilla Mac with no additional dependencies. 10 years ago I would've done all that stuff in Python, but not anymore. Thanks, Apple!

From a technical perspective, sure, I could push out a portable python environment and it wouldn't affect the rest of the system. But that comes at a cost. I don't want to fight for it, and I don't want to be responsible for maintaining it. It's easier to just use bash/zsh.

Python is also too heavy for some embedded devices. Not sure if I can count on Amber scripts to run in a busybox environment but maybe?

That said, if the question is "is it worth learning a whole new thing when I already know bash/zsh", I am not so sure. But in principle, I dig it, regardless of how practical it is with my specific background and needs. I mean, if I learned about this 20 years ago I feel like I might still be reaping rewards.

When do you need a newer or older version of Bash to target? I mean usually this is not a thing to concern about.

Yep, the code you provided is compiled into this:

command_0="$(cat file.txt | grep "READY")"
__status=$?
if [ "${__status}" != 0 ]; then
    echo "Failed to read the file"
fi

So, the outcome would depend on the pipefail option. (set -o pipefail)

As you suggested, an Amberic snippet would be:

import { file_read } from "std/fs"
import { match_regex } from "std/text"

const result = file_read("file.txt") failed {
    echo "Failed to read the file"
}
if match_regex(result, "READY"):
    echo "file.txt contains READY"

[ "$age" \< 18 ] && {
	echo "I'm not an adult yet"
} || {
	echo "I'm an adult"
}

if you want to be using braces in if statements lol

They know you can just do if ((age < 18)) in bash, right?

Or rather if ((10#$age < 18)) because age=021 would not be adult 😉 Hopefully, they protect against that at least.

(I had to double-check this stupid default is still a thing, since I moved to zsh many years ago.)

Thank you for this comment. I'm revisiting this comment because I need to write this...

Fish is my main shell of choice and I use my self-written functions(https://github.com/lens0021/Lens0021_Personal.Fish/blob/main/conf.d/lens0021_personal.fish) daily. But it is hard for me to say Fish's syntax is not weird. Especially, I'm a little fuzzy on how to use argparse. I am sorry.