[Arnavion]

PowerShell utilities are implemented as CLR classes inheriting from a particular base class. As such, they must be written in a CLR language (or PowerShell itself, of course).

Edit: Of course, you have the option of writing a minimal wrapper in PS that shells out to your other-language command but the interface between PS and non-PS programs is still based on a string commandline.

[jude-]

The other key limitation of PowerShell is that its commands all run in the same process (e.g. PowerShell is akin to a REPL). By contrast, UNIX programs each run in their own process, giving the programmer a much greater degree of freedom in the design and implementation of each program.

You can do IPC with PowerShell [1], but it's nowhere near as simple as UNIX-style piping.

[1] http://coders-corner.net/2014/05/11/inter-process-communicat...

[Arnavion]

PS has the concept of jobs, an amalgamation of code and environment that is serialized to a separate powershell.exe process (potentially even to a different networked Windows machine). Communicating with these remote commands is identical to communication with a command - piping in and out of objects.