davedolan.com

I’ve always had a soft spot for scripting. I know there is this stigma attached to shell and command scripting that reeks of ‘fake programming’ but honestly, I think ‘real’ programmer types can appreciate the benefits of being able to automate just about anything with a few relatively simple key strokes. I was on the VBScript/WSH bandwagon pretty hard, and I made extensive use of it for my companies Altiris deployment. As a result, I have a great deal of experience with it. Lately, I’ve been taken from scripting into the somewhat magical realm of .NET coding, which had been a totally separate area of study. Enter PowerShell: A .NET based interpreted script language for windows. That “interpreted” part I think is what makes people feel so ‘dirty’ when they talk about scripts, but come on, if you’re a .NET coder (or even a Java Programmer), you’re used to feeling that little bit dirty every time you run a ‘compiled’ executable on the runtime! After all, isn’t a virtual machine a sort of glorified interpreter anyway? (Yes, I realize there are technical differences, but, conceptually they are the same.) I take this approach to it: if you can point click and type something and you do it more than twice, then you might as well script it. I’ve just been playing with powershell for now, but the new playing field it opens up for me will allow me to come to grips with the fact that I’m a programmer trapped in the career of a systems administrator. I’ll play around and post some interesting things if I can come up with them. In the meanitme, here’s the site where you CAN AND WILL IMMEDIATELY GO AND GET POWERSHELL. Make sure you check out this PowerShell Blog and get the SDK too!

1. 
   Jeffrey Snover said...
   12:31 pm - December 28th, 2006

   I’m glad to see you like PowerShell. We tried to design it so that you had a range of programming choices/styles from quick ad hoc throw away scripts to more formal .NET programming. We did this specifically for folks like you that need/want to operate at different levels at different times.

   Give that you are smack center of one my target scenarios, I would appreciate it if you would blog the good, the bad, and the ugly of experiences learning/using PowerShell. We are very customer driven so your comments are very imporant to us.

   Cheers!

   Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
   Windows PowerShell/MMC Architect
   Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
   Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx

2. 
   Dave said...
   12:42 pm - December 28th, 2006

   Sure! I’m always happy to help people who want to be helped. I have to say that in the past I was a relative open source-only fan, and not a microsoftie, but these days since .net 2.0 and later, MSDN is really on the ball. I have nothing but praise for the overall community and good examples set by the MSDN, .NET and related technologies staff. Keep it up, and you’ll have more people like me ‘moving over to the dark side’ or at least working there too