GNU's shell (Score 1)

Richard, don't you think that the shell (bash, ash, dash, csh, zsh etc) is way outdated and conceptually wrong. Even simple things require external binaries like tr and print. VMS os had dcl ages ago and it was way more powerful. The syntax of any of the popular shells is a nightmare. What is you opinion on the topic? Would you like to change anything? If so what? Please ignore the fact that there are tons of scripts being used and that the whole universe might depend on them.