[Crito]

> "Reading/writing to/from files is a FAR lower bar than linking with the CRL."*

If I want to write a unix utility in C, or Java, or C#, or Lua, or Racket, or postscript, or brainfuck..., I can. Not just in an academic sense, but in a "it is actually reasonable and trivial to do so" sense. The list of programming language implementations that cannot read/write to/from files (knowledge of the concept of "pipes" is unnecessary, the user's shell opens those) is vanishingly small.

For the average developer who just wants to use Powershell/bash/whatever, it is absolutely language lock-in.

[pjmlp]

It is a common misconception that Powershell is CLR only.

You can also make use of any COM, DCOM, or plain dynamic library in the shell.

There are also text formatters for interoperability with older scripts.