>I can only use this feature by using a .NET language.
It goes without saying that a binary interface requires use of a system that understands that particular binary interface. With .NET being open source though, anyone is free to write a bridge to using the objects in COBOL if they wanted to.
>I can't take the strongly typed objects into a Node.js script, or a perl script.
Yes, because they have no concept of strongly typed objects. You can convert objects to strings if you're using an incompatible tool/language. I don't know what your point is. Sorry..
The point is that this thing is less valuable by being limited to only being used by things that Microsoft created (in reality). Text, with all of its flaws, can be used by everything.
I guess the point is the point. Potential bridges that do not exist already and probably never will do not matter -- extending that idea of potentiality I could say that you are free to reimplement the CLR in Fortran, so PowerShell is compatible with Fortran? Oups sorry you already reached that ridiculous point, only with Cobol.
Virtually any language can already input and output text. That's the real lingua franca of computing (even if it is messy and dirty), not .Net objects...
>Potential bridges that do not exist already and probably never will do not matter
The difference between impossible and possible is important. Please read what I was replying to. Using your argument, Anytime a project is open sourced, you could reply with "who cares about potential since nobody has actually done anything with the source". Good job.
>Virtually any language can already input and output text.
Um, you seemed to have missed the obvious point that objects can also be converted to text through powershell if the other side can only accept text. So, I don't quite know what you're complaining about. Could you detail your actual technical complaints with powershell, rather than having a philosophical argument?
>That's the real lingua franca of computing (even if it is messy and dirty), not .Net objects...
I don't agree with your opinion, nor with the idea that only a two-choice system can exist.
It goes without saying that a binary interface requires use of a system that understands that particular binary interface. With .NET being open source though, anyone is free to write a bridge to using the objects in COBOL if they wanted to.
>I can't take the strongly typed objects into a Node.js script, or a perl script.
Yes, because they have no concept of strongly typed objects. You can convert objects to strings if you're using an incompatible tool/language. I don't know what your point is. Sorry..