WTF?
Powershell uses a dotnet object-oriented pipeline (as opposed to the strictly text/string based Nix shells). The first version of the dotnet framework didn't appear until XP/Server 2003.
Oh, I didn't mean a useful shell had to be identically Powershell or use .NET -- just that Windows NT should have had SOME kind of a powerful interactive and programmable shell from the very start.
Neither MacOS nor Windows had a useful shell at that time; Windows had COMMAND/CMD "batch" processing and MacOS had basically nothing. And yet powerful shells had been around for decades. And it wasn't like Dave Cutler didn't know that -- DEC machines were where Unix got started, after all.
Unfortunately, both MacOS and WinNT remained glorified toys until the end of the century. That was where Microsoft lost the architectural lead -- MacOS leaped ahead with OS-X, and Windows merely grew a Fisher-Price colored UI and sat on its duff for seven years trying to achieve security by "Mother May I?" UAC.
I sure hope Windows 8 changes that pattern. BTW, will that be NT7?