the goal for a project like Oilshell (a shell with both a new syntax and support for standard bash syntax) would be to replace bash as the default shell in distros.
Right, that's the goal of Oil.
Right, so what's the point in switching to Oil as a scripting language when that hasn't happened?
Funny you mention Python being a better candidate than Oil as Oil is built a top a fork of Python 2.
https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/03/04.html#faq
As I see it, the goal for a project like Oilshell (a shell with both a new syntax and support for standard bash syntax) would be to replace bash as the default shell in distros. Until then, Oil scripts lack the primary feature of bash scripts just like other alternative shells.