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The Unix Way: option manager?

Linux command-line utilities are all-over-the-place when it comes to options that can be passed. There is a lot of history, but even so, is there a better way? The idea is to have small programs that handle one task well. But how can you make a small utility when parsing the commandline is a considerable project -- one that you have to reimplement over and over?

I had an idea: an option manager. Perhaps a library that:

Does not break anything - it is optional;
Parses command lines, providing a simple key-value data;
Parses config files, providing key-value data;
Allows for both (command-line overrides?)
Named 'favorite' groups of options - to avoid repeating commonly-used parameters

Linking in a dynamic library is the simplest way, but a service may make more sense, as it can cache things accelerating commongly-invoked utilities.

Although, thinking about it some more, it is really the shell that should provide some useful services for invoking processes and parsing arguments, and cache things that make sense. Shells really suck, with idiotic nitpicky syntaxes. It's kind of incredible that today, with what we know and have, we spend time developing idiotic pseudo-AI instead of robust, linguistically and computationally solid shell languages that are compilable.

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