> controversial

I did hear an opinion (somewhere else) that a shell shouldn't have associative arrays either and it was a mistake...

> Nushell

Nushell is a candidate and some people use it and like it. I personally disagree with the design. Then again, I'm not objective. I created Next Generation Shell. It's a fully fledged programming language with domain specific facilities (for running external programs for example). I like this approach more than trying to improve over a shell. It fits my brain better.