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Rumors of Cmd's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (microsoft.com)
Senior Program Manager at Microsoft has responded to speculations that Command Prompt is going away. He writes: The Cmd shell remains an essential part of Windows, and is used daily by millions of businesses, developers, and IT Pro's around the world. In fact:
1. Much of the automated system that builds and tests Windows itself is a collection of many Cmd scripts that have been created over many years, without which we couldn't build Windows itself!
2. Cmd is one of the most frequently run executables on Windows with a similar number of daily launches as File Explorer, Edge and Internet Explorer!
3. Many of our customers and partners are totally dependent on Cmd, and all its quirks, for their companies" existence!
In short: Cmd is an absolutely vital feature of Windows and, until there's almost nobody running Cmd scripts or tools, Cmd will remain within Windows.
1. Much of the automated system that builds and tests Windows itself is a collection of many Cmd scripts that have been created over many years, without which we couldn't build Windows itself!
2. Cmd is one of the most frequently run executables on Windows with a similar number of daily launches as File Explorer, Edge and Internet Explorer!
3. Many of our customers and partners are totally dependent on Cmd, and all its quirks, for their companies" existence!
In short: Cmd is an absolutely vital feature of Windows and, until there's almost nobody running Cmd scripts or tools, Cmd will remain within Windows.
Where's the fucking article?
Did anyone else read that as CmdrTaco has died, or at least as a hoax of his death?
Windows NT was designed by Dave Cutler, who chose C as the language for the NT kernel. It was the most significant impact of UNIX on NT.
Cutler also designed VMS, and likely had deep familiarity with "Digitial Command Language" (DCL) that is a well-built and powerful command processor itself (if you like writing your scripts in FORTRAN).
Cutler wanted to "get UNIX." Why he allowed a product as shockingly poor as cmd.exe to be written for the NT command shell simply baffles me.
The cmd.exe shell is described as a serial killer by Microsoft employees.
I also disagree with elevating BASH. Steven Borne disliked C, and retrofitted ALGOL on it, not only for the parsing syntax that became BASH, but also on top of the C compiler itself.
Cutler had a chance to see source code for multiple OS implementations and their parsers: RSX11, UNIX sh/csh, DEC DCL, and likely many more. How cmd.exe could have emerged from his group is quite simply beyond me.
Parent poster summarizes things well.
Debian's PopCon is similar ( http://www.linuxjournal.com/co... )
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