> Seems like you could even use a more serious programming language instead of sh/bash by setting SHELL to Python or similar. That may be a road to madness though...

TIL.

    SHELL=/usr/bin/python
    .ONESHELL:

    all:
      @from plumbum.cmd import ls
      print(ls["-a"]())

It totally works... Mwoooo ha ha ha haaaa!