Why PowerShell Exists When CMD Was Already There

cloudmato.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 18:33:01 +0530

You open Windows 11, right-click the Start menu, and you see: Command Prompt, PowerShell, Windows Terminal. Three things. You just wanted to run a quick command. Now you’re questioning your life choices.

This confusion is real, and honestly, Microsoft did not make it easy. But there’s a genuinely good reason PowerShell exists — and once you understand it, the whole picture starts to make sense.

CMD Was Never Really a Shell — It Was a Stopgap

Let’s start at the beginning. cmd.exe — the Command Prompt — has been around since Windows NT launched in December 1987 [1]. Before that, COMMAND.COM handled things in MS-DOS. So yeah, Windows has had a command-line interface for nearly 40 years.

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Why PowerShell Exists When CMD Was Already There

CMD Was Never Really a Shell — It Was a Stopgap