>The problem is so many programmers don't take the time (or care to take the time) to learn to use the well thought out design of Unix tools opting instead to see every problem as a nail corresponding to the latest trend in hammers (programming languages).
Unix tools are the arguably the best tools available to a modern user. That, however does not mean that the Unix tools are well designed; many would argue that the Unix tools are extremely poorly designed or have no discernible design at all. S-expression are a much more powerful and useful abstraction than a "stream of bytes". POSIX was hacked on many years later in attempt to make sense out of the mess that shell commands had become. Shell scripts are very fragile and have never been truly portable across various *nixes, although the situation is better than it was twenty years ago, when it was enormously difficult to port scripts across the various commercial Unix installations, because they would break in many different and subtle ways.
Unix tools are the arguably the best tools available to a modern user. That, however does not mean that the Unix tools are well designed; many would argue that the Unix tools are extremely poorly designed or have no discernible design at all. S-expression are a much more powerful and useful abstraction than a "stream of bytes". POSIX was hacked on many years later in attempt to make sense out of the mess that shell commands had become. Shell scripts are very fragile and have never been truly portable across various *nixes, although the situation is better than it was twenty years ago, when it was enormously difficult to port scripts across the various commercial Unix installations, because they would break in many different and subtle ways.
I recommend reading the out of date but still useful Unix Haters Handbook: http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/ugh.pdf