Comments on: PowerShell and Automation – Microsoft TechEd IT Forum 2007 http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2007/11/16/powershell-and-automation-microsoft-teched-it-forum-2007/ One foot in the muck, the other in utopia Tue, 22 May 2012 15:13:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: nate http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2007/11/16/powershell-and-automation-microsoft-teched-it-forum-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-100884 nate Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:31:46 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2007/11/16/powershell-and-automation-microsoft-teched-it-forum-2007/#comment-100884 My general impression is that it's more of a scripting programming language rather then a shell. To me a shell is a day-to-day operating environment.. one were I can whip up quick scripts that take advantage of deceivingly 'simple' command line applications. For a admin a shell is probably more comfortable and effective UI then a GUI for most tasks. Powershell lacks the sort of history and wealth of tools that I can take advantage of. Sure I can replicate 'ls' or 'cat' or 'grep' in a nice way with a few lines of code.. but there are always corner cases and issues that you don't expect when working on a script for 30 seconds versus a small GNU C-based utility that has been around for 15 or more years. So it's not so much on the same level as Bash or Ksh for quick-n-dirty scripting, but more like a executable environment for Perl or Python. Something more like: <a href="http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/" rel="nofollow">http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/</a> that tries to be a in-between a shell and a scripting environment. My general impression is that it's more of a scripting programming language rather then a shell.

To me a shell is a day-to-day operating environment.. one were I can whip up quick scripts that take advantage of deceivingly 'simple' command line applications. For a admin a shell is probably more comfortable and effective UI then a GUI for most tasks.

Powershell lacks the sort of history and wealth of tools that I can take advantage of. Sure I can replicate 'ls' or 'cat' or 'grep' in a nice way with a few lines of code.. but there are always corner cases and issues that you don't expect when working on a script for 30 seconds versus a small GNU C-based utility that has been around for 15 or more years.

So it's not so much on the same level as Bash or Ksh for quick-n-dirty scripting, but more like a executable environment for Perl or Python.

Something more like:
http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/ that tries to be a in-between a shell and a scripting environment.

]]> By: Danno http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2007/11/16/powershell-and-automation-microsoft-teched-it-forum-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-94832 Danno Fri, 16 Nov 2007 22:48:54 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2007/11/16/powershell-and-automation-microsoft-teched-it-forum-2007/#comment-94832 I'd be interested in this to the extent that it can be smart about turning plain text files into structs or rules based objects. (Like say I have a file with a number of tab seperated columns, can I pipe that as an array of arrays, or an array of structs [based on the names in the first row] and also, possibly attach some logic to this struct?) Past that, if you have to break the object oriented mindset to handle all your stuff that isn't built for powerset, that just doubled the number of shell programming paradigms you have to use. This, to me, is the problem that people run into when they start talking about making a command line based around Ruby or Python. I’d be interested in this to the extent that it can be smart about turning plain text files into structs or rules based objects. (Like say I have a file with a number of tab seperated columns, can I pipe that as an array of arrays, or an array of structs [based on the names in the first row] and also, possibly attach some logic to this struct?)

Past that, if you have to break the object oriented mindset to handle all your stuff that isn’t built for powerset, that just doubled the number of shell programming paradigms you have to use.

This, to me, is the problem that people run into when they start talking about making a command line based around Ruby or Python.

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