slashdot: m$ praises unix and linux shell clis and prepares to emulate them

[Christopher Browne]

On 6/9/05, Peter <plp-ysDPMY98cNQDDBjDh4tngg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> Quoting Slashdot:
> 
> "The command line interface to the Windows Server OS will be changed to
> the new Monad Shell (MSH), in a phased implementation to take place over
> the next three to five years. 'It will exceed what has been delivered in
> Linux and Unix for many years', so says Bob Muglia, a Senior VP at
> Microsoft." More from the Tom's Hardware article: "The language in
> Muglia's comment offers the first clear indication that WMI may be yet
> one more component being left behind, as Microsoft moves away from
> portions of Windows architecture that have historically been vulnerable
> to malicious attack."
> 
> This means that:
> 
> a) they concede that their current shell is not so good

That is an obvious fact, and not all that interesting.

After all, what they were traditionally trying to do was to establish
that the "Graphical Windows Way" was better, that it should be easier
to point and click to do things.

If you assume that sort of thing, it represents admission of failure
*of the GUI* to be sufficiently convenient to use.  That means the
concession is a much greater one than you are suggesting...

> b) their yardstick is the unix and linux shell (20 years old and still
> evolving)
> c) they will emulate it, and hope to better it in 3-5 years (assuming it
> will stand still ?)
> d) they are doing this after having turned their backs to it in NT days,
> i.e. for the last ~7 years or so

They seem to be doing something that is both more and less.

On the "more" side, MSH/Monad will have to have a mechanism for
importing library interfaces (presumably from the .NET environment).

That isn't something that Unix shell scripting systems do.  
- You don't import an SQL API and then start submitting SQL requests.
- You don't import a GTK API and then start writing GTK GUI code.

Thus, there is something of a step forward.  (Not that it's really
new; it's the sort of thing they used to do in Multics, back in the
days before Unix existed...)

On the other hand, it's not evident that they are looking at all to
the sorts of "neat globbing" that zsh has initiated.
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