> bash obviously is just using OS commands with syntactic sugar
No, bash is technically not "more" OS than e.g. Python. It just happens that bash is (often) the default shell in the terminal emulator.
I love Python and dislike Bash, but just look at the difference between listing a folder in Bash vs Python, for example.
Have to disagree, "technically" yes, both are interpreted languages, but the ergonomics and mental overhead of doing certain things are wildly different:
In python, doing math or complex string or collection operations is usually a simple oneliner, but calling shell commands or other OS processes requires fiddling with the subprocess module, writing ad-hoc streaming loops, etc - don't even start with piping several commands together.
Bash is the opposite: As long as your task can be structured as a series of shell commands, it absolutely shines - but as soon as you require custom data manipulation in any form, you'll run into awkward edge cases and arbitrary restrictions - even for things that are absolutely basic in other languages.