With today's hardware and chips, 90% of the time, interpreted unix scripts will perform as efficiently as code written in higher level languages - such as java. The difference is that , with unix scripts, you cut out about 80-90% of the lines of code, and have something that can easily be maintained and supported. Even if you still want to code in a higher level language, unix shell scripting is invaluable for support functions - such as moving around files, parsing log files, etc. An analyst or support person who uses the topics and examples in this book to master scripting can save him or herself literally hundreds of hours - especially when dealing with repetitive tasks with many lines of data.