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Microsoft Releases A New Monad Command Shell Beta

Posted by timothy on from the sneer-or-consider dept.

Watercooler Warrior writes "Slashdot originally broke the news that a new Microsoft command shell was in the works when a reader noticed a suspicious job posting by Microsoft India. Today Microsoft released the first really usable version of the shell (codenamed Monad) to beta testers - and anyone who carefully reads the WinHEC slides about Monad will find how to join the beta and get a peek at it. The shell looks like a bunch of old-school Unix and Perl hackers were given free rein to do what they wanted with the .NET framework, and from what is known about the backgrounds of the Monad developers this is probably pretty close to the truth."

2 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's about time by MBCook · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Both of those are BASH (OSX used to use csh or maybe tsh but they switched it). Personally I LOVE BASH. After messing with Linux for a few years, the Windows shell drives me nuts. It's just so primitive feeling.

    This is one of those situations where I think MS is doing a serious NIH (Not Invented Here) for no good reason. I can understand the reason to make Direct X instead of use OpenGL (for controll) and other such decisions. But I don't think having their own shell (instead of an implementaion of BASH) does them any good. I don't think it helps them sell more software. I don't think it helps them controll the market more. They should have taken BASH, and extended it with their .NET stuff.

    I can use BASH on Linux, BSD, BeOS, OSX, and many many others. Why should I have to learn a new shell for Windows? Why can't they just accept it for once. It doens't cost them anything. If anything it would make porting apps over to Windows from other platforms EASIER.

    At least make it so I can replace my shell easily (like you can change your default shell on other platforms)? That would be enough for me.

    It's not exactly MS's fault that their current shell isn't very good. They've been going pure GUI and trying to keep people there. They've said DOS is dead and no one should ever have to use a CLI. So they've had no reason (based on that) to improve the shell since it's last incarnation, DOS 6.22. Of course now they are making a new CLI and making a big deal over it. Everything old is new again, eh?

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  2. Re:I've been using an older version.... by bersl2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The actual versions of commands seem entirely too object oriented and thus too verbose.

    I can't imagine anybody who has ever used a CLI object-orienting it. Did some marketing drone get a say in the design.

    The command line is more likely to be used for quick-and-dirty jobs, but the language involved (Bourne, C shell, etc...) can scale up to a larger, more maintainable project. The same can't be said about most object-oriented languages in the downward direction. Of course, maybe I just haven't seen the right ones.