Scripts should be written using the project main language

This is an hot-take I’ve been feeling for a long time.

Almost all projects I’ve worked on have scripts we wrote to automate a repetitive process. Consecutively, the majority of the scripts became obsolete and unmaintainable after some weeks because we either didn’t need them anymore or they have become too complex to be looked at. Afterward, these scripts are either refactored or they stay forever in the scripts graveyard.

I think one of the major reasons that led to this outcome is that we wrote the scripts in Bash or Python. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the two, but I feel like teams can win more if they write scripts using the main language their project is developed with. From the start, time and effort required to write them is reduced since:

• The learning curve is minimal since you already know the corners of the language
• Internal language APIs can be leveraged, which drastically changes the mental model to write the script (for the better)
• Scripts feel more natural and eventually maintainability increases. Team members are familiarized with the language!
• Development machines compatibility increases. Windows users can finally run all scripts. 🤭

The downside of going in this direction is the main language runtime support. Not every language is multi-paradigm or was designed to support scripting. For example, writing scripts on JVM languages would require additional effort to build a toolchain that compiles and runs files on the fly, with a short start time. But if you work on a web frontend project (JavaScript), the power is in your hands.

At the end of the day, it is up to teams to talk and establish an agreement on which language fits best their needs and standardize their scripting language. If they can use the main language, awesome. If they can’t, a higher-level scripting language with native support (e.g., Python) should be adopted, since it provides the means to increase maintainability in the long run.