I got a good laugh from an article about Microsoft eating its own dog food by running their domain on their own server software. Good for them. Using their products might make them better. But, I doubt anything they can do, now or in the future, will shake my belief that their best product was Microsoft Basic ©1978.
A variant of MS Basic 1978 was my first “programming” language. I learned it from Radio Shack's “Getting Started With Color Basic” book for the TRS-80 Color Computer. To me, that book is still the epitome of computer instruction. It could teach pre-teen kids to program microcomputers in an era when there was no one else around to ask for help. I still have that book, and its sequel for Extended Color Basic.
In 1978, MS was writing BASIC roms for micros. These ROMS were, for all practical purposes, then entire OS for the machine (I know, I know, add a cartridge, get more OS.) That “OS” had a library of routines in ROM, a screen editor, a command language, and you were good to go. You powered on. BLINK. Instant OS in 1 second or less.
Next comes the IBM PC with BIOS and BASIC ROMs. MS and IBM throw a loadable, upgradeable DOS on top of that. Tools galore, and you can still program it! Then, the BASIC ROM becomes a casualty of the cheaper PC wars. For a while, it was still loadable in DOS as GWBASIC and its like. Finally, BASIC was laid to rest as its strange offspring QBasic began shipping in DOS.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone by Apple and Unix, Microsoft eventually decides a GUI would be a good idea, starting with their Interface Manager, er, Windows 1.x, then the almost stillborn Windows 2.x and by Windows 3.x they almost had one. See History of Microsoft Windows for those of you who thought Windows 3.1 was the first version released.
To me, this was the best of all worlds, in Microsoft's sphere... BIOS starts DOS which had tons of tools by this time from magazine programmers and such. Then DOS can start the GUI if you want to waste the resources or run a Windows-specific program. And, the GUI can still use all of the DOS tools out there. Interface extends OS, and still benefits from it. Coincidentally, this is exactly how Unix and Linux work: GUI-optional.
Then, it all goes wrong: Windows 95. Some well-meaning but dim bulb says “Let's put the cart in front of the workhorse and boot the GUI as the OS! Everyone loves the GUI, right?” The breakage begins. This perverse inversion of the natural order tries (and fails IMO) to say the Interface is the OS, but does NOT have the OS tools built into the Interface to back that statement up. Yet, the politics behind pushing the point removed the fallback tools too. Now we're stuck! Users were too busy with new buttons to notice the OS was killed and replaced by a crippled GUI.
By the way Microsoft, if you ever wondered why everyone began using Linux? Now you know. Windows released in 1995 and Linux begins to gain widespread following in 1995. See the connection?
MS pushes hard for all GUI (in fact, touting the death of DOS and even the keyboard via voice control “any day now”) by writing tons of a bad GUI-only tools for their 32-bit windows line. Hilariously enough, many of the tools were Visual Basic-based. For those who don't know, Microsoft BASIC 1978 begat BASIC-A begat GW-BASIC begat QBASIC begat Visual Basic begat VB.NET. Microsoft BASIC
Meanwhile, as DOS withers on the vine and sees the oncoming clueless newbie train, it wises up, and ESCapes to become a plethora of free and open DOS-like OSes and still under heavy development today.
So, today, while reading an article about the Windows 2008 server and how slow it is, I saw a comment that Windows 2008 comes with “PowerShell” which has scripting and over 130 tools blah blah market speak market speak snore snore.
Scripting and 130 tools, you say? I better switch now to get all that POWER!
But wait, before I do, how much POWER do I have in my SHELL now?
On my Fedora box, if I press a TAB key in the Z-shell, it will try to complete the command or filename for me. Just curious how many tools I had handy, I pressed 'a' and hit TAB.
Let's see... I have only 295 tools that start with 'a'.
Going further and listing the rest of the alphabet, in lower then upper case, would just sledgehammer the point home that Windows PowerShell is more than anemic, it's ridiculous. In fact, I am ridiculing it right now.
So, after more than a decade of working so hard at getting rid of DOS (with batch file scripting!), Microsoft realizes their mistake and begins rowing back downstream where the free DOSes, Unix, Linux have been all along (recently joined by MacOSX too!), steadily building tools of their own that work without a GUI, or with if if you want one.
PowerShell? Whoop-de-do.
If you want a “PowerShell”, I suggest avoiding Windows 2008 and looking elsewhere.