Microsoft's last "we do it all" project

Today's Microsoft is different from the "evil empire" of yesteryear. Today, Microsoft embraces open source and supports non-Microsoft operating systems, languages, databases, and tools.

But it wasn't always that way.

In an earlier age, Microsoft was the empire. They were big, but the reason people considered them an empire was their attitude. Microsoft had answers for all of your computing needs. Operating system. Utilities. Office suite, including e-mail. Database. Development tools. Accounting packages. Project Management. Browser. The goal was for Microsoft to be the sole source for your computing needs.

Microsoft ensured this by making its tools more capable, more performant (is that a word?), more reliable, and more integrated with other Microsoft technologies than the competition's offerings.

One weakness was the command-line shell, CMD.exe or as it was known early on, the "DOS box". CMD.exe was a direct clone of the command-line interface from MS-DOS, which was initially a clone of the CP/M command line interface (itself a copy of DEC's command line interfaces). Microsoft extended the MS-DOS interface over the years, and even added feature in the Windows version.

But Microsoft had to stay compatible with earlier versions, and features had to be inserted into the shell "language", often resulting in a clunky syntax. The decision in MS-DOS to allow the slash character as an option specifier meant that directories had to be separated by backslash. That meant that backslashes could not be used as escape characters (until they could, but only for the double-quote character). Variable names had to be signified with a percent sign, as a dollar sign was allowed as part of a file name (that, too, dated back to CP/M). The compromises cascaded over the years, and the result was a lot of complaints to Microsoft, mostly from developers. (Microsoft gave weight to the opinions of developers, as it knew they were important for future applications.)

Microsoft needed an answer to the complaints. As an empire, Microsoft needed to provide a better shell. They had to provide the best, a product better than the competition. To meet that need, they invented PowerShell.

PowerShell was Microsoft's bigger, better, comprehensive shell. It would fix the problems of CMD and it would offer all needed capabilities. You would not need a competing shell. It had everything, and it was better than all other shells. Its commands were descriptive, not cryptic. Options to commands were consistent. It could run scripts. It had variables (with the 'proper' syntax of dollar signs). It had multiple scopes for variables (something lacking in other shells). It allowed for "pipelining" of commands, and it could pass not just text streams but full .NET objects in the pipeline. It allowed for hooks into the .NET framework.

PowerShell was a shell "done right", with everything you could possibly need.

And it was the last product of Microsoft's "we do it all" strategy.

The problem for Microsoft (and any empire) is that no matter how large you get, the world is always bigger. And since the world is bigger, you cannot provide everything for everyone. No matter how fast or powerful you make your products, someone will want something else, perhaps something small and light. All-encompassing empires are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Microsoft has come to terms with that concept, and changed its product offerings. Microsoft Azure allows for non-Microsoft technologies such as Linux and Python and PHP. Windows now includes a WSL (Windows Subsytem for Linux) component that runs bash, a popular shell for Linux.

I think this change is good for Microsoft, good for its customers, and good for the industry. For Microsoft, they no longer have to build (and maintain and support) products for everything -- they can focus on their strengths and deliver well-designed and well-supported products without being distracted. Microsoft's customers have a little more work to do, analyzing non-Microsoft products as part of their technology stack. (They can choose to remain with all Microsoft products, but they may miss out on some opportunities.)

The industry, too, benefits. For too long, Microsoft's strategy of supplying everything intimidated people from entering the market. Why invest time and money in a new product for Windows only to see modest success be met with tough competition from Microsoft? I believe that many folks left the Microsoft ecosystem for that reason.

Of course, now Microsoft can concentrate its efforts on its key products and services -- which may change over time. Microsoft may move into markets; don't think that they will ignore opportunities. But they will enter as a competitor, not as "the evil empire".