OP: Well, Powershell makes the big deal about having a built-in parser, in contrast to *sh and everything else where the commands themselves are responsible for parsing their arguments. Then there's the big thing about being able to pass objects instead of text. Then there's the ability to extend the shell in an object oriented matter (with Powershell's fucking-god-damn-long-names-for-EVERYTHING)
I don't think the object passing is a big deal. There is no reason why alternate versions of standard shell utilites can't be rewritten to pass XML if it was really needed. Shell utilites and the shell in itself is supposed to be small and fast, amirite?
The built-in parsing ability, it's nice, but isn't it better to have that function relegated to common libraries? Which made me think of something else: do you think XML is ever going to become so fundamental that it becomes part of the Linux kernel?
And I don't care about the way Powershell has the object-oriented polymorphism or whatever. If you want to program, get a compiler. (It's funny how it says in the PS documentation how "sometimes a compiler isn't available". That's something that NEVER happens in Linux)