The command prompt is a symbol that tells you that the software is ready to receive the next command. In DOS, this is normally the 'C:>' symbol. To make this rather more friendly it's usual to include the path so that the command prompt might read 'C:\WINDOWS>' to indicate that you are looking at the C: drive and are in the \WINDOWS subdirectory. Since the command prompt is not very friendly and you have to remember dozens of special command words, it's hardly surprising that Windows was developed.
