Bruce – what do you use powershell for? What type of user are you (IT, developer, artists, chef, … )?

Seriously — I can’t think of a single reason I would need powershell on even a monthly basis — but maybe I’m missing something.

Having never tried — is it possible to use the cmdlets within a GUI (write a gui app which uses Powershell code, rather than the other way around)?

Aaron, I’m a 28 year developer/IT/Admin/DBA kind of person. I have always worked in a small group and have had to do all kinds of things. I always look for ways to automate stuff and I have used batch files, 4nt, VB Script, C++, VB, PowerBasic, Python, and Perl to do the tasks that I need to do. It’s important that I get the most productivity that I can out of the tools that I use. I’ve been looking at PowerShell to see if I can use it to replace most of the other tools that I use for automating tasks. While it doesn’t behave exactly the way that I would like it to from the command line and it doesn’t perform as well as something like PowerBasic or Perl, it does have the capabilities to replace the tools I use and to make my life easier.

I currently use PowerShell to do things like:

1. Process data contained in multiple spreadsheets and convert the data to something that PADS (a system that shares information about personnel that work at Nuclear Power Plants) will accept.
2. Display status information on several IIS servers that I am responsible for.
3. Automate a multi step process of a vendor install into a single step.
4. Automate a clean startup of Oracle Application Server on a Windows server.
5. Import podcasts into iTunes from the folder structure that Juice downloads into.

I consider Perl “write only” for the most part. I find it hard to go back and maintain anything but simple Perl scripts. I suppose that the way some people are writing their PowerShell scripts you could probably say the same thing about it.

PowerShell provides some powerful commands that free you from doing the plumbing code required in normal languages. For example:

$ImportedFile = import-csv c:\some_file.csv

Will read in the entire file and place it into an object collection where each field described in the first line of the csv file is now a property of the object.

If you have csv file like:

first_name, last_name, id_number
Bruce, Atkinson, 01234

the example line of PowerShell above would let you reference them like this:

$ImportedFile[0].first_name
$ImportedFile[0].last_name
$ImportedFile[0].id_number

In a regular language you would have to loop through the file parsing out the data. In PowerShell it’s already done for you and it’s fast. There are tons of commands like that in PowerShell.

In PowerShell I’m not limited to just PowerShell. I can call an existing perl script or PowerBasic console command and capture the output into an object. So PowerShell is sort of like command central where I can easily orchestrate the interaction of diverse technologies.

WPF — still the heavyweight champion in the .NET world of frameworks and working set (and GPU and machine requirements) — feels wrong to be paried with a shell script. I know they’re trying to improve things, and there are some nice things that are possible (although many are easy to do in WinForms) … still feels wrong.

I’m not saying Powershell isn’t useful. It certainly is for some (again, hasn’t been for me) ….

I’m happy that Microsoft is enabling this path for you and the others. It shouldn’t be a substitute for a full GUI application calling cmdlets or any similar API (object model) for controlling, etc.

I’m sure some will disagree, but I believe Microsoft needs to make sure they don’t spread themselves too thin trying to address to many problems, without spending the proper amount of time concentrating on the bigger issues facing their customers — both enterprise and consumers.