I personally find Ruby's built-in shell features more ergonomic:

    `cat package.json | grep name`

    branch = `git branch --show-current`
    `dep deploy --branch=#{branch}` if $?.success?

    [
      "sleep 1; echo 1",
      "sleep 2; echo 2",
      "sleep 3; echo 3",
    ].map { |cmd| Thread.new { %x(cmd) } }.each(&:join)

    name = 'foo bar'
    `mkdir /tmp/#{name}` if $?.success?