25 years too late: the Microsoft Shell

One bit of technology that Microsoft has recently started talking to developers about is the Microsoft Shell. This is something that may or may not be a part of the upcoming Microsoft VISTA OS. Basically, someone at Microsoft finally decided that DOS/Windows’ horrid built-in scripting language, as exemplified in millions of nasty BAT files around the world, needed to be more like a UNIX command-line.

Kind of ironic, since that old DOS pidgin scripting language was never anything more than a really feature-poor, painfully bad imitation of 1979-era UNIX.

This is where Microsoft Shell steps in, bringing things such as reasonable syntax and (hopefully) complete command i/o redirection and piping, just like UNIX has had since the dawn of time.

UNIX advocates have long argued the advantages of a command-line interface, mainly that it enables us to use our innate language abilities to interface with a machine, instead of just dragging a mouse around (which evolution hasn’t really built us for). So it’s great that Windows is finally stepping forward towards UNIX in this regard. Welcome to the 80’s, Microsoft!