Try Plan 9's "rc". It has a more C-like syntax, so you write things like "for (i in `{seq 1 100}) { echo $i }"; I really enjoy writing in rc.
In bash: $array expands to the _first_ element of the array; you have to say ${array[@]} to get the whole array. And then you have to quote it in case one of the elements has spaces.
In rc: $array expands to the whole array, and the expansion is _not_ re-parsed, so if an element of the array has spaces in it, it is still considered a single element after the array variable expansion.
For this reason rc doesn't even need double-quoting; it only has single-quoting for escaping spaces in string literals.
bash or zsh:
for i in `seq 1 100`; do echo $i; done
for i in `seq 1 100`; echo $i+1 for rc.
I mean, what about [[ ]] vs. (( )) vs. [ ]? Or the beginning of a case statement? Those always get me since I don't use them often enough for them to stick.
% which \[
/usr/bin/[
[1] Albiet with some minor differences:
% if [ -d /tmp ]; then echo "TRUE"; fi
TRUE
% if test -d /tmp ]; then echo "TRUE"; fi
test: too many arguments
% if test -d /tmp; then echo "TRUE"; fi
TRUE
% diff /usr/bin/{test,\[}
Binary files /usr/bin/test and /usr/bin/[ differ
% man \[
No manual entry for [ $ 9 man rc | wc -l
496
$ man bash | wc -l
4890
rc really shines when you have problems that in bash or zsh would suggest using multiple layers of expansion. The semantics of rc's expansion is much less thorny.
I prefer real examples - here, why not just write
seq 1 100
seq 1 100 | xargs echo