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 PowerShel

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).