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> programming language interpreters, available to the end-user.

Yeah, fuck those end-users who might want to automate things with a script.

I think an end user that wants to automate things with a script can be expected to install their interpreters themselves or use an interpreter that builds on the OS's shell.

I am not to familiar with MacOS, but I imagine it comes with a bash/sh terminal? If so, then that is something that should be first choice for automation.

Everything else, be it python, perl, ruby or whatever should be installed by a user as needed.

And I think that's totally reasonable—as long as Apple makes the change in a major update, when users can expect (some) things to break and should be encouraged to make time to prepare.

Part of it is that it's just a mental burden to keep this kind of compatibility information in my brain. I have VMs set up of past macOS releases in case I need to run something old. I don't have VMs set up for earlier versions of a release, and I don't even know where I'd get an installer. Admittedly, in this case it would just be a matter of installing Python, but I don't necessarily know that as a user, or the software could need to be linked to Cocoa or some such.

What do you think “the OS’s shell” is?

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