> Windows NT, by way of OpenVMS so I've heard, had some very interesting ideas that I think Linux would have done well to imitate, like having a Common Language Runtime that lets you directly interact with the objects and functions of every application and code base on your system and communicate with them in structured data
The CLR is Microsoft’s answer to the JVM. It is not among the ideas Windows NT inherited from OpenVMS. It is not part of the core OS. Most apps don’t use it. With the advent of WinRT, there is arguably less of a push for its use than there once was.
And when you talk about “communicating with structured data”, I believe you are talking about PowerShell - which apps don’t participate in by default, you need to go to the extra effort of writing PowerShell cmdlets for your app, and many developers don’t. You have to write them in PowerShell itself, or else a CLI language such as C#, F#, C++/CLI, etc. So if your app is written in C or (standard) C++ or Go or Rust or Python or Java or JavaScript or Lisp or whatever, integrating with PowerShell requires adding a new language to your project - no wonder many don’t bother
The CLR is Microsoft’s answer to the JVM. It is not among the ideas Windows NT inherited from OpenVMS. It is not part of the core OS. Most apps don’t use it. With the advent of WinRT, there is arguably less of a push for its use than there once was.
And when you talk about “communicating with structured data”, I believe you are talking about PowerShell - which apps don’t participate in by default, you need to go to the extra effort of writing PowerShell cmdlets for your app, and many developers don’t. You have to write them in PowerShell itself, or else a CLI language such as C#, F#, C++/CLI, etc. So if your app is written in C or (standard) C++ or Go or Rust or Python or Java or JavaScript or Lisp or whatever, integrating with PowerShell requires adding a new language to your project - no wonder many don’t bother