5 ms·

I just to comment on this by saying That whatever space powershell fills on windows its not a niche .. not a niche at all I agree with you, powershell is powe

I just to comment on this by saying That whatever space powershell fills on windows its not a niche .. not a niche at all I agree with you, powershell is powerful and I guess benefit from being new .. it has amazing uniformity and amazing discover-ability Anyway, I was saying, powershell fills automation on windows, it is THE automation tool on windows and has been for a while, there is hundreds of commands that you can you to manage and deploy and update almost anything important on windows This is not a niche, not a niche at all .. it is as far from niche as i can think of And now that it is being ported to other systems, it had the potential to be THE automation tool for many organization that have mixed environments So you see, when it was primarily windows, it was not a nice, again because automation on windows is not a niche .. now imagine it beyond even windows Powershell is about automation, not scripting, and not just the command line ... it is really about automation Instead of following steps, you automated with one script ..or possibly a small GUI app

SwellJoe 9y ago
I think you and I merely disagree on the meaning of "niche" in this context, rather than on facts about usage of PowerShell. I was simply saying that PowerShell doesn't serve a unique purpose in my environment that isn't better served by other languages or shells. "Niche" was short-hand for, "This language is particularly well-suited for this task or set of tasks", and I wasn't (intentionally) saying anything about its popularity. All programming languages have a niche where they are strong. It is not a way of saying, "This language is obscure or not used a lot." It's a way of saying, "For the things I do, I can rule it out, because I don't need to do the things this language does better than others." From what I can tell, scripting (or, "automating", if you prefer that term) Windows is PowerShell's niche. I don't need to script Windows, so I don't need PowerShell. In short: Saying PowerShell doesn't fill a niche I need to fill is not an insult to PowerShell or a statement about how popular it is. It's merely saying I don't find it suits my needs in my environment (which contains no Windows servers).
mattmanser 9y ago
As a programmer who knows powershell to an extent, I still make cruddy little console apps rather than piss around with powershell. That's where powershell failed abysmally.
m00g00 9y ago
Programming is automation though. Scripting is a (loosely defined) form of programming. I'm really not sure what the distinction is. You could just as easily say bash "is really about automation", because it would also be true. Water is wet, etc. PowerShell is useful on Windows because it does something that could not be done easily or at all before, that being automation without using GUI's. It does this by providing hooks into the Windows infrastructure to change settings and perform tasks without fragile registry edits and GUI manipulation. But UNIX systems have no need for this by virtue of it's command-line first design. If MS was still using DOS and ini files the situation would be similar. So what does PowerShell really offer in UNIX land? Configuring and automating nix systems is drastically different than doing the same on Windows systems, so having a common scripting language probably does not help much. I guess a better question would be what does PowerShell offer in the way of "automation" that is so much superior to bash and *nix command line programs.
- systems 9y ago
  "what does PowerShell offer in the way of "automation" that is so much superior to bash and *nix command line program?" 1- it runs on both unix and windows .. and hopefully more in the future 2- uniformity, all command have the same form, verb-noun 3- discover-ability, you dont need google to find the cmdlet, you can glob search the help system 4- support, there are cmdlets for many systems that bash will never, ever, ever, ever approach or support 5- GUI, you can create a GUI in powershell
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    > 5- GUI, you can create a GUI in powershell More than that, it has the entire CLR at its disposal, including the C FFI.

SwellJoe 9y ago

I think you and I merely disagree on the meaning of "niche" in this context, rather than on facts about usage of PowerShell. I was simply saying that PowerShell doesn't serve a unique purpose in my environment that isn't better served by other languages or shells. "Niche" was short-hand for, "This language is particularly well-suited for this task or set of tasks", and I wasn't (intentionally) saying anything about its popularity. All programming languages have a niche where they are strong. It is not a way of saying, "This language is obscure or not used a lot." It's a way of saying, "For the things I do, I can rule it out, because I don't need to do the things this language does better than others." From what I can tell, scripting (or, "automating", if you prefer that term) Windows is PowerShell's niche. I don't need to script Windows, so I don't need PowerShell. In short: Saying PowerShell doesn't fill a niche I need to fill is not an insult to PowerShell or a statement about how popular it is. It's merely saying I don't find it suits my needs in my environment (which contains no Windows servers).

mattmanser 9y ago

As a programmer who knows powershell to an extent, I still make cruddy little console apps rather than piss around with powershell. That's where powershell failed abysmally.

m00g00 9y ago

Programming is automation though. Scripting is a (loosely defined) form of programming. I'm really not sure what the distinction is. You could just as easily say bash "is really about automation", because it would also be true. Water is wet, etc. PowerShell is useful on Windows because it does something that could not be done easily or at all before, that being automation without using GUI's. It does this by providing hooks into the Windows infrastructure to change settings and perform tasks without fragile registry edits and GUI manipulation. But UNIX systems have no need for this by virtue of it's command-line first design. If MS was still using DOS and ini files the situation would be similar. So what does PowerShell really offer in UNIX land? Configuring and automating nix systems is drastically different than doing the same on Windows systems, so having a common scripting language probably does not help much. I guess a better question would be what does PowerShell offer in the way of "automation" that is so much superior to bash and *nix command line programs.

systems 9y ago
"what does PowerShell offer in the way of "automation" that is so much superior to bash and *nix command line program?" 1- it runs on both unix and windows .. and hopefully more in the future 2- uniformity, all command have the same form, verb-noun 3- discover-ability, you dont need google to find the cmdlet, you can glob search the help system 4- support, there are cmdlets for many systems that bash will never, ever, ever, ever approach or support 5- GUI, you can create a GUI in powershell
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  > 5- GUI, you can create a GUI in powershell More than that, it has the entire CLR at its disposal, including the C FFI.