Wow.
Jeffrey Snover’s presentation of msh has left me very, very impressed. For those that don’t know what msh is, it is Microsoft’s .NET based command line interface – also called project Monad. It’s being designed with the .NET Framework 2.0 and from what I’ve gathered will be an important Longhorn technology. However, it is not Longhorn-exclusive. You can download the preview version of Monad along with a .NET 2.0 beta from betaplace.microsoft.com right now (in the video, Jeffrey tells you to use the “mshPDC” login).
I did some experimenting with Monad about a week ago. I was very impressed by what I saw but didn’t really delve too deeply into the new system. It appeared to be very much like the common Unix shells (bash or ksh). However, I knew its capabilities were beyond that, I just didn’t fully understand how far beyond it they already are!
Unfortunately I ran into a small problem that made me uninstall the preview… the .NET Framework 2.0 beta that was included was somewhat out of date and caused some problems with the Media Center application (preventing it from updating the Guide). I might check to see if there’s a newer version that what I had, or if a newer .NET 2.0 beta is available that it will run with.
If you’re wondering what I mean when I say that Monad is way beyond bash and ksh, then you should definitely check out this video.
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=25531#25531