My understanding was, that the initial argument was about Bash as a programming language and most aspects discussed were aspects were Bash is no different than POSIX:

1. Return values of subshells 2. Clean design 3. being a "real" programming language

The only Bash specific part was

> You should stop using Bashisms and subtle, obscure language features unless you absolutely have to.

But in fact, the usage of subshells to limit the scope and subshell return values have nothing to do with Bashisms.