For those of you morning the loss of Monad as it henceforth becomes known as Windows PowerShell (it’s impossible to say that without putting some inflection into your voice to try and sound like a voice over for a cheesy advert) – we now have a new name to make fun of thanks to Nintendo renaming there next generation console the Nintendo Wii (and actually pronounced wee). It’ll no doubt generate more titters than the name of the old Atari ST operating system.
Back to the Microsoft choice of Windows PowerShell. Seriously – why wasn’t MSH good enough? A fantastic new object-orientated command line shell does not need a consumer friendly name, in fact a TLA with an “in-the-know” way of pronouncing it is better for geeks – and let’s face it, the new shell ain’t aimed at my Grandma.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the popular linux terminal emulator (called PowerShell) – hope those guys don’t start feeling the weight of the Redmond lawyers trying to protect a name which a) Was allready being used and b) Isn’t that good anyway. I know not everyone likes my companies name, but a least when you do a Google for it you get to our website…
Actually I think PowerShell is a great name - Surely better than MSH. It's like arguing that MUTFS (Mac\Unix TFS) would be better than Teamprise?
Well, I do agree that Teamprise brings me bad memories of Borland's Inprise so maybe MUTFS would actually be better.
But seriosuly, saying that geeks don't need good "marketing" names is like saying developer tools can look bad because developers don't care. Yet - the screen shots of Teamprise look very attractive...
Marketing bafflegab aside, geeks come up with the best names anyway. One of the best is the recursive name par-excellence: GNU.
You are probably right, after a few days the "Powershell" shock seems to have warn off, I must have just been in denial. It was such a suprise, I was fully expecting Monad to have been the code-name and MSH to be the final one. PowerShell seemed so different and more like a name for a Dishwasher tablet than a new shell.
The whole Inprise thing passed me by at the time - though an older company changing it's name is usually a sign of trouble. I think perhaps you are "projecting" some of your emotions over Borland's troubles towards Teamprise :-)
However, I think we can all agree. The name "Wii" is still terible after a few days consideration.
Mighty scripting is very important, and not only for Geeks. As time passes, many users become technically more advanced, they use their computer as a toolshed for fast data processing.
Just look what the Web has done ? Most web-developers have started with their own homepage and by the time they knew XML, XSLT, Javascript, CSS, HTML and PHP.
I too think, that naming it "PowerShell" sounds a little stupid. But if it helps gaining momentum, attracts more users using a command-line, then I am fine with it.
The disaster of Windows Scripting Host is still in my mind. What could that have been ?! Scriptable applications, IPC scripting, with any language you desire (Ruby, Python, Perl, ObjectRexx, Javascript, VBscript) Jesus! Instead it has become a toytoy for system-administrators, that use it to create desktop-shortcuts, create user-profiles, hookup printers and so on.
I am pretty new to PowerShell and to me it seems, that the thing I dislike the most is not the name, but the lack of ActiveScript support (meaning: Take the language you want).
PowerShell is for PowerUsers.