If you write a lot of scripts to automate tasks, you probably already know this. However, if you don’t, and you are still reading, you are probably a programmer, in which case, you really should be learning how to script in BASH!
A couple of pointers for you:
1. Using a -x, in the shebang line “echo"s every line before executing. This turns out to be quite useful for debugging shell scripts
2. It’s quite easy to make BASH print a countdown.