The rigid and obscure syntactic structure also checks. It's a couple of hours task for me to define a function, mostly spent on debugging the definition.

(Probably, if I did it all the time, I'd get it right every time. Just like creating and using COBOL variables.)

I have the same problem with bash. I have spent hours trying to write a simple function which in PS would have been 10 minutes.

You mean writing the function body? I was not talking about the function body, but about getting the declaration correct. (The bad error messages and lack of real time verification surely contribute here.)

PS is more powerful than Bash, it really should be faster to write a function body in it.

Hah, I was thinking of that... I did have to code in COBOL for 6 months in ~2000 and I see some similarities in syntax paradigm (though superficial of course) - but I figured the reference would be too obscure for majority of HN audience :->