I started to work with Unix (Solaris and AIX) before I took on Linux, and I have three observations to make on your article:
1. While its true that all this shortcuts are very useful when using the bash shell, it's also good to point out that they also exists in one form or another in other Unix/Linux shells as ksh or csh.
2. For me what really makes bash/korn shell/cshell really powerful is their solid scripting abilities, allowing complex manipulations and using the popular piping method of interchanging information between applications, long before visual basic scripting in Windows.
3. And last, but not least, no Unix/Linux shell discussion would be complete without mentioning two venerable tools, frequently used in shell scripting: sed and awk. Although both are cryptical and intimidating for the novice, they can prove very useful and powerful for many system administration tasks, such as analyzing and processing long log files from the innumerable Unix/Linux services.