Different guy but same conclusion here (write it in C# instead of powershell). The main pain points I run into: 1) Powershell mingles "process stdout" and "fu

Different guy but same conclusion here (write it in C# instead of powershell). The main pain points I run into: 1) Powershell mingles "process stdout" and "function return" to be one and the same. While this kind of makes sense, unless I'm extremely fastidious about redirecting everything I call to $null, chances are I'm not returning what I expect to return. The end result is I shy away from doing anything that needs to return values (rather than output) in Powershell, which is kind of important for anything nontrivial. I tend to set globals like I've gone back to the Apple 2 and started programming in BASIC again as a result, which gets messy real quick. Processing stdout/stderr in C# is a little annoying by comparison, but easily fixed. 2) Syntax changes in updates. When I installed powershell tools for VS, my scripts broke - to fix them I had to replace e.g.: info "$vmGuid: has BuildMatrix tags: $tags" With: info "${vmGuid}: has BuildMatrix tags: $tags" And: logCmd {& $VBM -- clonevm $OriginalVmGuid --register --name $NewCloneId} logCmd {& $VBM -- modifyvm $NewCloneId --natpf1 "ssh,tcp,$SshHost,$SshPort,,22"} logCmd {& $VBM -- startvm $NewCloneId --type headless} waitUpTo 60 3 -Sensitive $true {& $VBM -- guestcontrol $NewCloneId run --exe "/bin/sh" --username "$Username" --password "$Password" -- '/bin/sh' -c "mkdir ~/.ssh; echo '$PubKey' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"} waitUpTo 60 3 {& $Ssh -- -o NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost=yes -o ConnectTimeout=60 -o BatchMode=yes -p $SshPort $Username@$SshHost -- '/bin/sh' -c "echo Server ready" 2>&1} With: logCmd {& $VBM clonevm $OriginalVmGuid --register --name $NewCloneId} logCmd {& $VBM modifyvm $NewCloneId --natpf1 "ssh,tcp,$SshHost,$SshPort,,22"} logCmd {& $VBM startvm $NewCloneId --type headless} waitUpTo 60 3 -Sensitive $true {& $VBM guestcontrol $NewCloneId run --exe "/bin/sh" --username "$Username" --password "$Password" -- '/bin/sh' -c "mkdir ~/.ssh; echo '$PubKey' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"} waitUpTo 60 3 {& $Ssh -o NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost=yes -o ConnectTimeout=60 -o BatchMode=yes -p $SshPort $Username@$SshHost -- '/bin/sh' -c "echo Server ready" 2>&1} Those "--"s I removed were mandatory in PowerShell 2 for at least some of these commands, yet caused problems in later versions - I don't even know how to write this in a way that will work on multiple powershell versions. I guess I have to explicitly pin -Version when invoking PowerShell all the time? The now simple problem of "How do I get this running consistently on multiple computers" has now turned into an IT and debugging headache. Meanwhile, C# projects get consistently built with a single VS and C# compiler version, and machines I install to are just running the even more stable bytecode. 3) Default installs lag way behind - e.g. Windows 7 only comes with PowerShell 2 by default, so you don't even have things like Invoke-WebRequest, forcing you to write your own or get your IT department to install an updated version for everyone. C# just feels like it has more "batteries included" even for older .NET targets. 4) Figuring out exactly what types are expected vs what I happen to be using is a general muddle in Powershell for any sort of collection in my experience. C#'s static typing, clear errors, and intellisense in general is just extremely hard to beat.