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Why MS never developed a truly powerful unix compatible terminal is beyond me (not cygwin). Developer buy-in and kudos alone should be incentive alone. The fee

by arel 12y ago

Why MS never developed a truly powerful unix compatible terminal is beyond me (not cygwin). Developer buy-in and kudos alone should be incentive alone. The feeling of being restricted on windows as a developer always gets me running back to linux sharpish.

UK-AL 12y ago
Powershell is pretty powerful. You can do basically the same things as in bash. However because of its youth, some equivalent tools are missing.
- GeneralMayhem 12y ago
  PowerShell is cool, but it requires learning PowerShell. Why should there be an entirely separate learning process to be able to work normally on just one OS?
  - cwyers 12y ago
    Well, because Windows is not Unix. It's not even "not Unix" the way Linux isn't Unix. Its heritage is mostly VMS and CP/M, if you want to compare it to anything. Trying to treat Windows as a Unix is a very leaky abstraction that is going to cause many more problems than it solves.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    Why do you think all operating systems should follow one single architecture? Why should there be an entirely separate learning process from C to learn Lisp or Haskell?
- astrodust 12y ago
  "Basically the same" and yet absolutely not the same. The world did not need PowerShell.
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    The world didn't, but Windows admins did. It's allowed a lot of people to migrate away from legacy VBScript. You don't want to program in VBScript, trust me.
ygra 12y ago
(I'm assuming you don't mean a terminal emulator, but a command-line shell when you say »unix compatible terminal«.) The team that developed PowerShell actually wanted to do just that. They didn't, because Unix was built mostly around text files, so tools that work with text files are a good way to manage such a system. Windows however, is not, so Unix tools are a particularly poor way of managing Windows. That's also why PowerShell treats file system, registry, WMI, etc. as first-class constructs, because it has to to be effective.
- krakensden 12y ago
  > That's also why PowerShell treats file system, registry, WMI, etc. as first-class constructs, because it has to to be effective. Also- it exposes them as filesystems & files.

by arel 12y ago

UK-AL 12y ago

Powershell is pretty powerful. You can do basically the same things as in bash. However because of its youth, some equivalent tools are missing.

GeneralMayhem 12y ago
PowerShell is cool, but it requires learning PowerShell. Why should there be an entirely separate learning process to be able to work normally on just one OS?
- cwyers 12y ago
  Well, because Windows is not Unix. It's not even "not Unix" the way Linux isn't Unix. Its heritage is mostly VMS and CP/M, if you want to compare it to anything. Trying to treat Windows as a Unix is a very leaky abstraction that is going to cause many more problems than it solves.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  Why do you think all operating systems should follow one single architecture? Why should there be an entirely separate learning process from C to learn Lisp or Haskell?
astrodust 12y ago
"Basically the same" and yet absolutely not the same. The world did not need PowerShell.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  The world didn't, but Windows admins did. It's allowed a lot of people to migrate away from legacy VBScript. You don't want to program in VBScript, trust me.

ygra 12y ago

(I'm assuming you don't mean a terminal emulator, but a command-line shell when you say »unix compatible terminal«.) The team that developed PowerShell actually wanted to do just that. They didn't, because Unix was built mostly around text files, so tools that work with text files are a good way to manage such a system. Windows however, is not, so Unix tools are a particularly poor way of managing Windows. That's also why PowerShell treats file system, registry, WMI, etc. as first-class constructs, because it has to to be effective.

krakensden 12y ago
> That's also why PowerShell treats file system, registry, WMI, etc. as first-class constructs, because it has to to be effective. Also- it exposes them as filesystems & files.