decent languages for unixy shell scripting

are there any? ash, dash, csh, ksh and bash all suck when you want to do more complex programming because simple shit like conditionals are based on weird hacks, and because they favor clever one-liners over clarity. perl makes complex programming easier but it also relies heavily on cleverness and doing cryptic shit with symbols. popular scripting languages like python are ok if your're are idea of shell script is 'text processing', not 'managing processes and pipes'. scsh is not maintained anymore. maybe someone should make a racket #lang for this shit.

>>32
as if GNOME isn't also a bloated shitpig express
but at least we have the option of less shitty window managers I suppose