25 years too late: the Microsoft Shell
10 Aug 2005 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!