I disagree that a Unix shell has few advantages. :) It&#x27;s critical if you&#x27;re trying to work in a cross platform environment. If a colleague gives me a .sh script, I need some way to run that.<p>There&#x27;s also a huge benefit to having access to the ecosystem of Unix command-line apps. A few of the major ones have been ported over to run natively on Windows, but there&#x27;s a lot that will never be.<p>As I mentioned in another comment: Every modern OS <i>except</i> Windows has a Bash-like shell and environment. I can move easily between MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Android, and iOS, and it feels similar. But every time I use a Windows machine, nothing I&#x27;ve done elsewhere translates. Cygwin helps bridge that gap.