Things I like about PowerShell include objects - cmdlets return them and you can call methods. For example, you can get a list of services (get-service) and eac

Things I like about PowerShell include objects - cmdlets return them and you can call methods. For example, you can get a list of services (get-service) and each is a ServiceController object, which you can Start(), Stop(), etc. Things I don't like, or is a pain point for me, are those same objects. As far as I can tell, there isn't a better way to figure out what you actually are getting back from a cmdlet besides feeding output through Get-Member. For example, what comes back from dir/ls/Get-ChildItem? Well that's a trick question because it depends on which "provider" you invoke. On a file system (dir somedirectory) you'll get back FileInfo or Directory info, for a registry hive (dir hklm:) you'll get a RegistryKey, for environment variables (dir env:) you get a DictionaryEntry, etc. So while it is fantastic there is a general way to enumerate items, the docs have to be vague and list System.Object as what returns from Get-ChildItem and its various aliases, which isn't very useful for working with the results. This makes forming non-trivial commands with pipelines fairly annoying because I have to feed each stage through Get-Member to even figure out what I have and what is now available; this strategy starts to break down if a pipeline stage feeds a loop, etc. I'd love it if the ISE displayed what actual object type exists at every point of a pipeline, rather than the trial-and-error-by-Get-Member approach I've adopted. Or for there to be some better way to get the return type of a cmdlet. PowerShell is a huge improvement over the old command prompt though.