[pie_flavor]

Honestly I don't see that going anywhere. It was said somewhere upthread that the real value of PS was in the Microsoft management modules, and I'd add the .NET library to that. If you're developing from scratch anything a script might want to use, your battle is going to be pretty uphill.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Unfortunately I have to agree. Current efforts are constrained by the desire to integrate with existing tooling and the text-parser-based approach of the unix interfaces in general (in particular sysfs and procfs on Linux).

I honestly think someone should do this "from scratch", as you say. I believe the effort would be worth it, but I doubt that the unix community would be amenable to the idea as it goes against their deeply held cultural traditions.