You're right, there are clunkier, more opaque, and harder to work with constructs in programming. Like `sh` arguments. And like `sh` quotebarf.

And Busybox is commonplace. Systems that include Busybox usually do not include `bash`. And so, for my purposes, if I can specify `bash`, I can also specify, say, Ruby, which--while by no means perfect--makes life much, much easier.