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Microsoft Programming Windows

Rumors of Cmd's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (microsoft.com) 202

Posted by msmash from the stating-it-out dept.
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.
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Rumors of Cmd's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated More

Rumors of Cmd's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

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  • Good! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @11:50AM (#53611075)
    I'm glad! CMD is critical in our company, too.

    MS actually does a really good job supporting things for a long time. Some other responses, I'd imagine...

    Apple: We're brave enough to stop supporting any version of CMD that came out before this year.

    Google: We killed it. Too bad.If you don't buy our ads, then we don't really care about how you use our software.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 )

      I wished they just expanded the command prompt compared to putting in powershell.

      • i agree because the changes they are making to those shells should be universal--the powershell window has some features you dont get in the traditional cmd window which make it much easier to work in. i dont use win 10 at work so im not sure how many of the cmd/powershell windows changes go both ways there, but at work im stuck on win 7 and cmd sucks, but powershell is mostly good

      • I wished they just expanded the command prompt compared to putting in powershell.

        Supposedly Microsoft doesn't pay to revise old lines of code. Hence, PowerShell with new lines of code came into existence.

      • Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mdm-adph ( 1030332 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @02:05PM (#53612111)

        How easy would that be, though? The way cmd and powershell works is fundamentally different: cmd is string-based, like bash, but powershell is object-based. Powershell really is a different animal entirely once you start using it.

    • Microsoft seems to have been getting less reliable in terms of not killing things for novelty's sake(Ballmer may have been a jerkass; but he understood what the job of a OS company is better than the ipad-envy faction); but it seems hard to imagine killing cmd.exe About a zillion legacy customers depend on it; and, because it's a legacy dependency, they actively don't want it to change.

      It's pretty obvious that all of Microsoft's future love and attention are going toward Powershell; but what would they g

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Likely M$ are pushing the retail version of Windows to be a closed box the user can not touch. Basically looking to turn the consumer PC into a XBox complete with software and content licence fees, that sells all your privacy and that you have pretty much no control over.

    • I do quite a bit of stuff in PowerShell, but I do a LOT MORE stuff in cmd. PowerShell is completely different, and used for completely different things. It's a mistake, I think, for MS to try to make it the default over CMD. Not yet. Maybe 3-4 years. It WAY too early for this.

    • Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05, 2017 @01:04PM (#53611663)

      Apple : You can still use CMD, you just have to dongle-chain 3+ apps to get it to work. Oh yeah, and that'll be $500. You're welcome.

      Google : We've decided arbitrarily to change CMD to DMC, but we'll probably switch it back and forth 2 or 3 times in the coming week. Business dependencies? What are they?

      Amazon : CMD will be replaced by a flying mothership powered by cosmic rays. (*Bong sounds)

      HP : We've decided to sell off CMD and focus on shit people no longer need or want instead.

      IBM : Spending 200 million on our own cutting-edge CMD app was probably not a good idea, but hell, it's just money right? We're IBM, it's fine.

      Adobe : In order to use CMD, you simply have to sign up for our $200 a month subscription service to everything else we sell. What a deal!

      Facebook : Anything you type into a CMD prompt is FB property and will be tattooed on your soul forever. #Progress. 'Zuck '2042

      WSJ : We will no longer call CMD line input "commands", we'll just fill your screen with DOS and let the reader decide what it is.

      Trump : I love CMD, it's the best for hacking. Very strong commands! Why is Bash so weak and girly?

      • Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05, 2017 @02:35PM (#53612315)

        Oracle: Now that you're using CMD, we're going to shake you down for licensing fees or sue you.

        Congress: CMD is flawed so we should dismantle it without a good alternative in place. With fewer regulations and more tax cuts, the market will create a better CMD.

        Samsung: *KABOOM*

        Liberals: Trump loves CMD, so it's probably sexist or racist.

        Conservatives: Liberals hate CMD so we love CMD.

        YouTube: Please watch this advertisement before continuing to use CMD.

        Wikipedia: !!!PLEASE GIVE US MONEY!!! "Command Prompt" redirects here. For the concept, see command prompt.

    • I hope they don't get rid of Edlin which is critical to our operations here.

      As for Microsoft doing a really good job of supporting things for a long time, I wonder how much 16 bit code is still in Windows 10?

    • CMD should never have existed in the 1st place. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by emil ( 695 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @01:53PM (#53612015)

      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 [nullspace.io] 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 [swtch.com].

      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.

      • Re:CMD should never have existed in the 1st place. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @02:32PM (#53612289) Journal

        It took Microsoft a decade and a half to produce a proper shell for Windows NT/Win32. In that time they seemed to try everything else but a shell; VBscript/Jscript, WMI objects, registry commands, but at every iteration they were told "Look at the Bourne shells, for chrissakes, that's what we want!" The deep fear and hatred of all things *nix at Microsoft inevitably lead them to just implement half-ass solutions. Even Powershell is an overly verbose and frankly rather slow shell, but at least it allows for automation of most aspects of the Windows server.

        What it really boils down to me is that Microsoft never really understood, nor did they ever really want to understand how sysadmins used and manipulated servers. Windows carried on the long-standing DOS tradition of pushing in their own direction regardless of what made sense or what the rest of the industry was doing; a willful exercise in refusing to accept long-standing principles of system administration. Everything about Windows administration always made me feel like I was using some idiot's half-ass attempt at remaking Unix, so that you could go to a point, but never beyond that. For years there was a whole industry built on filling in the holes in COMMAND.COM/CMD.EXE.

        • I don't agree with you that Microsoft hated "all things UNIX." If you take the ftp.exe and nslookup.exe files from C:\Windows\System32 and run UNIX strings on them, you will see:

          $ strings ftp.exe | grep Cali
          @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
          $ strings nslookup.exe | grep Cali
          @(#) Copyright (c) 1985,1989 Regents of the University of California.

          Microsoft has certainly swallowed and ingested BSD UNIX code. It would not surprise me if the FTP source code contains fragments

          • Yes, they grabbed some chunks of BSD to build Winsock, but that was largely expediency. It's a bloody pity they hadn't just done what Apple did, and grab the whole bloody BSD userland.

        • Re:CMD should never have existed in the 1st place. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @04:08PM (#53612923)

          I think that's because Windows just isn't a command-line culture at heart like *nix. I think instead it's more of a GUI/Application culture, which makes sense, if you think about it, as the focus was on visual applications from the start. As such, a typical Windows developer thinks about embedded scripts inside an application to automate things, and using OLE to inter-operate with other programs or data. *nix developers pass data (often text) from small, focused utility to small focused utility, typically with Bash or another shell as the glue, because it's legacy came from text-only environments with a powerful shell. It's just two different ways of thinking about solving problems, but server administrative problems and application solutions are not necessarily equivalent, as you indicated.

          I'd also posit that this is one reason why *nix tends to do well in server spaces, since working remotely is comfortable even through a simple terminal, and why Windows does well on the desktop, since most users are more comfortable with graphical interfaces than a command-line. That's not the only reason, of course, but I think it contributes.

          • The problem is that GUIs don't tend to lend themselves to automation tasks with quite the same flexibility. I remember back in the 1990s using one of those "GUI batch script" programs that would automate mouse pointer, mouse clicks and the like. It did work for automation tasks, but it was just bloody awful to develop and debug these "scripts", the source of which looked more like some insane man's version of Logo programs. These did improve a bit over time, but they demonstrated where GUIs become obstacles

  • WTF? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Major Blud ( 789630 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @11:50AM (#53611079) Homepage

    1) Who suggested that it dead?

    2) Oh wait, there's no link to an article to state who it said it.

    I mean really.....

  • This is why Microsoft is going down! (Score:5, Funny)

    by 31415926535897 ( 702314 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @11:53AM (#53611101) Journal

    C'mon guys, have COURAGE!

  • Proof that they're spying on you (Score:5, Insightful)

    by e r ( 2847683 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @11:53AM (#53611103)

    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!

    The only way they could know that is if they're spying on everyone who uses Windows.
    Am I wrong? Is there some other, totally consensual and benign way that they could know this?

    • What made you think that they weren't? The ridiculous amount of phoning home data from Windows 10 is what killed the Windows phone.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        The ridiculous amount of phoning home data from Windows 10 is what killed the Windows phone.

        What in the FUCK are you talking about? Apple collects EVERYTHING, but their phones are still #2. Google collects a lot, and theirs are #1.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e r ( 2847683 )

        What made you think that they weren't?

        No, I already believed past articles that said MS were spying.
        I just find the manner in which MS is condemning themselves here to be interesting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Is there some other, totally consensual and benign way that they could know this?

      Kinsey conducted another survey.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      They could know it (well, say it with confidence) from a limited number of users who participate in detailed opt-in telemetry. They could collect it from surveys. They could make estimations. They could infer it from indirect but related telemetry you're aware of. It's not like they said, "We know exact numbers." For the sake of the point being made, it's a claim that they can say with confidence.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      Duh.
      When you install Windows 10 they tell you right off the bat that they collect data for telemetry purposes, and this is exactly what they are doing here.
      They also present you with the option to turn it off, which, I think, is for real, at least in this case.

    • The only way they could know that is if they're spying on everyone who uses Windows.
        Am I wrong? Is there some other, totally consensual and benign way that they could know this?

      They could have conducted a survey and made statistical inferences but why bother when they can just take what they want?

    • No one every denied that there's proof. Most people just agree that it's entirely benign and used for statistic gathering.

      Please don't use "spying" in this context, you're diluting the meaning of the word to suit your personal agenda.

      • Re:Proof that they're spying on you (Score:5, Funny)

        by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @03:49PM (#53612807)

        No one every denied that there's proof. Most people just agree that it's entirely benign and used for statistic gathering.

        Please don't use "spying" in this context, you're diluting the meaning of the word to suit your personal agenda.

        I completely agree. The word "stalking" is much more apt than "spying".

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by e r ( 2847683 )
        What word would you like me to use?

        If your mother were looking through your computer and counting how many and what kinds of files you open, which programs and how often, what kind of hardware etc. ... you would call that "spying" wouldn't you? Would "snooping" be a better word?

        Whatever word you choose, it's an invasion of privacy.
        I'm not the only one who values his privacy so this is not a personal agenda; it's one I share with a great many people.

  • MS has an execution count for apps in Windows?

  • I haven't used CMD in years at my government IT job. Probably because everyone has PowerShell scripts to run.

  • Need more coffee (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FunkSoulBrother ( 140893 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @11:59AM (#53611157)

    Did anyone else read that as CmdrTaco has died, or at least as a hoax of his death?

  • Edge..What Edge? (Score:3)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @12:05PM (#53611209)

    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!

    I wonder why they included Edge. I have never seen anyone use it. Is it that popular? I don't think so and the numbers [netmarketshare.com] show.

  • "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."

    Yeah, whatever. Seriously, since when has dependence on a spec or tool ever stopped Microsoft from abandoning it? I'm not saying they will, but just because people use it means nothing, absolutely nothing to Microsoft. Or to Apple, for that matter. Headphone jack, anyone?

    • This explains part of the inertia that prevents IT worldwide from being dragged in to the 21st century.
    • What do you mean by abandoning it? Sure, they might stop new features etc but even turds like asp still work.

    • Re:Riiiiight (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EndlessNameless ( 673105 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @01:03PM (#53611661)

      Microsoft makes virtually all of their software revenue from enterprise sales. And killing a legacy tool as widely-used as CMD will piss them off.

      So while I believe Microsoft will not hesitate to give home users the middle finger, I seriously doubt they will kill CMD any time soon.

      Everything new is in PowerShell, but we have a lot of old crud that runs in CMD because no one wants to break it.

    • Yeah, whatever. Seriously, since when has dependence on a spec or tool ever stopped Microsoft from abandoning it?

      Turn that around. When has Microsoft actively killed a tool that was highly depended upon in enterprise without offering an alternative?

      For the many years they put a phenomenal amount of effort into ensuring backwards compatibility of their products, and the heap of cruft in their bloated codebase is testament to it.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Now buy the t-shirt... (Score:3)

    by Richard Kirk ( 535523 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @12:28PM (#53611361)
    http://shirtoid.com/164835/aut... [shirtoid.com]
  • If a mindless talking head from Microsoft is publicly denying it, then it must be true.

  • I'm just glad that Microsoft didn't have the courage to make CMD.EXE work only over a proprietary wireless interface.

  • It is a pretty insignificant part of Windows in terms of the size of the executable. We're already up to distributing Windows on DVD as it is too large for a CD, dropping Cmd isn't going to magically change that. Even for the customers who never use it in their lives, having it around doesn't hurt them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Generally things like this are suggested as a way to reduce support/testing obligation.

      On a less practical front, a lot of software orgs get downright *religious* about their 'new and improved way' and will counter productively screw over their existing offering to try to convert folks.

      MS tends to support stuff forever (IE will *still* run ActiveX stuff if you try hard enough, and that's only as rough as it is because there are dire security motivations to kill it). I don't like their stuff and struggle da

  • Windows 10 cmd.exe improvements (Score:3)

    by trawg ( 308495 ) on Thursday January 05, 2017 @01:21PM (#53611809) Homepage

    I only just recently discovered that Windows 10 has a bunch of improvements [windows.com] to the command line.

    Most notably (at least for me) is the addition of CTRL-backspace as well as well as CTRL-C/V for copy paste. I do a lot of stuff on the command line and the added functionality looks really great.

    It's just a shame I'm too scared to upgrade to Windows 10 because of all the additional telemetry that seems like a real pain in the ass to disable! (I did see this open source tool that looks like it might be worth keeping an eye on: https://modzero.github.io/fix-... [github.io] ).

    • CTRL-Backspace is like Ctrl-W on unix terminals (and teletypes) some 30-40 years ago.

      $ stty -a
      speed 38400 baud; rows 54; columns 157; line = 0;
      intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = ; eol2 = ; swtch = ; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R;
      werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0;

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trawg ( 308495 )

        Yeh I know! That's why I want it so bad; every time I'm on a Linux box I can delete the last word and it drives me mental not being able to do it in Windows.

  • Following Microsoft's law of perverse behavior (i.e. If it's obvious, useful and well understood, get rid of it), it should be gone in a year, replaced with a version of the syntactic abomination that is powershell that doesn't support command line behavior and arguments.

  • undoing bad mod - disregard
  • Port bash to windows and ditch that cmd.exe (aka command.com).
    You are already missing an opportunity with 4dos since 1989...

  • There was a period of a decade or two where you could do everything a Macintosh has to offer without any command line tools. So it's more than just a theory that most people don't need a command line interface. Maybe Windows needs a better GUI before it drops Cmd, but it's not even doing that, it's switching to a slightly different command line interface, PowerShell. It's hard to take hyperbolic statements like "Cmd is an absolutely vital feature" very seriously when other platforms operate with different c

  • lol (Score:2)

    by hackel ( 10452 )

    I almost feel sorry for Microsoft developers, having to keep maintaining this garbage piece of software from the Windows NT days designed to emulate MS-DOS. Almost. I'm so glad I choose not to work in that awful ecosystem.

  • The top reasons why I personally still use the cmd shell in windows

    1) ipconfig (verify if DHCP pulled an address, and if so, is it correct with proper default route and DNS servers)
    2) ping 4.2.2.2 (verify connectivity to a known public server that will always respond to PING requests, that doesn't need to resolve a DNS name)

    Once basic network connectivity issues are address though, in this day in age, most other things have decent 3rd party tools to diagnose and fix issues. I personally keep a shitton of sa

  • More courage than taking away the head phone jack.

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