Recently, I had to change my development environment from Linux to Windows at my new work place. I had used windows before but never for development, mostly only for gaming.

So everything was working out well for me, till I started using the windows command prompt, long story short it SUCKS !!

The Command Prompt

Well, if you are already using windows you know what I talking about, the command prompt for windows is pretty primitive and does not do much

• The GUI is pretty basic
• It doesn’t support color output
• Copy and pasting content is a hassle
• Cannot make it go full screen without adjustments

Finding an alternative

So my search began to find an alternative to this problem. I was quite sure that somebody out there might has already developed something that I can use to solve my problem.

After a day or so of googling I was not disappointed, turns out I was not the only one frustrated with the windows command prompt, and luckily there are were a lot of alternatives out there.

I finally narrowed it down to a few which I thought were pretty awesome

• Babun
• Cmder
• Conemu
• Cygwin

Cmder was the winner

I tried all the shortlisted alternatives one by one, all had there quirks and perks, but for me Cmder was a clear winner.

There were couple of things I like really loved about it.

• GUI features of Conemu were used which covers all the Multi Tab, Split Screen Prompts

• Colorful and configurable
• Ability to integrate other command line emulators and switch within the application.
• Copying (just select the content using the mouse) and pasting (right-click to paste) content was a breeze

Conclusion

For now I am pretty happy with cmder as my command line alternative for windows for now and am still exploring a lot of new features everyday.

If you are a developer like me and stuck with windows for development you definitely should give it a shot.