Not the point. Of course it's not surprising that these utilities will execute scripts if you tell them to. The unexpected fact is that you can tell them to -- and that this is documented behavior which probably isn't going away.

If your argument was that no programmer should be surprised that you can tell an archive utility to execute an arbitrary script, then you and the author of the post are in complete agreement. The remaining difference is that the article actually does something to fix the problem while you merely hurl an implicit insult at anyone who hasn't seen this type of privilege escalation yet. One of these actions is more constructive than the other.

I don't disagree, but, as a relative novice with shell scripts, I definitely did not realize so many tools could execute arbitrary code.

The parent post's anger and disgust is misplaced, though. This article is informative at a novice level, and well-written to that level. Not a trainwreck.

Sure, fine, but why the anger? Why the 'trainwreck'? that's not constructive at all. The article definitely didn't claim these were security vulnerabilities - only that they were surprising. Some of these were surprising to me too. Am I an idiot for not knowing these? (no, I'm not, I'm just a novice).

It's really aggravating to learn something from an article that is making someone more knowledgeable this angry without explanation.