Hmm... i must say, iam addicted to shelll scripting and cammand line these days, I save so much time, by automating tasks, Shell scripting is a must if u want to do work efficiently and effectively.
It isn't a arcane dark art, its a philosophy of UNIX a way of life, we combine small small utilities into a big program, to do complex functions, thats why UNIX stuff is very efficient as the utilities are not 'Swiss army Knifes' they are efficient and simple and do their work effectively. But nonetheless powerfull.