My understanding of this Windows vs Linux OS development article is that it is a great description of why open source beats closed source for large complex projects. Please correct me if I am wrong, instead of just downvoting me. I am here to learn
Linux succeeded in large part because of Linus, not (just) because it is open source.
Many open source projects languish, or get mired in petty bickering, same as any other large organisation of humans.
The successful projects -- closed or open -- often have a strong-willed visionary with the political clout to enforce his way of doing things.
Big corporations tend to eventually drive those visionaries away, resulting in a bland mess designed by committee with more paperwork written than actual code.
> "That's literally the explanation for PowerShell. Many of us wanted to improve cmd.exe, but couldn't."
However, this is the opposite of this effect, and the anonymous MS guy complaining about it in the article is dead wrong.
Jeffrey Snover developed PowerShell, it's his unique vision, and in this respect he's very much like Linus Torwalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, or any other such famous developer you care to name.
It's literally impossible to fix CMD.EXE because meaningful changes to it would be breaking changes. That would destroy backwards compatibility, and is not something anyone responsible would do. Linus keeps saying the mantra: "Don't break the kernel ABI!" as well for a reason. It's not just Microsoft doing this kind of thing. Similarly, Bash and "sh" have barely changed over decades.
PowerShell v1 and especially v2 were brilliant, elegant, and beautiful. Then Jeffrey Snover went on to do other things, PS got handed over random Microsoft developers, and it slowly started to accumulate inconsistent warts and bugs.
Jeffrey Snover works for Google now, which does circle back to a valid issue raised in the article: The FAANGs do keep poaching the best people from Microsoft, and Microsoft hasn't done much to fix this. Even from the outside, it's noticeable just how poor the average developer skill is at Microsoft.
Linux succeeded in large part because it was free, compared to UNIXes of the time which also were in a licensing and lawsuit hell. But yes, Linus himself is a big part of Linux success and benevolent dictatorship is one of the part.
> That would destroy backwards compatibility
People who weren't bitten by it rarely understand that.
> PowerShell v1 and especially v2 were brilliant, elegant, and beautiful
Oh yes! One thing what I really liked is what an extremely big part of PS... was written in PS! You literally could drill down some system cmdlets to see, learn and adapt! It started to dwindle down with PS5, sadly, with performance requirements.
