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My biggest issue with PowerShell is the lack of a good, web-indexed, resource for exposing what SHOULD be expected in a normal operating environment. It makes

My biggest issue with PowerShell is the lack of a good, web-indexed, resource for exposing what SHOULD be expected in a normal operating environment. It makes looking for features that are expected in a standard library just not worth the effort. By comparison every other language I like programming in actually has a very strong set of documentation in an easily found repository.

reificator 8y ago
That is definitely true. Whenever I see a link to MSDN I assume it will probably be dead or redirect me to the homepage.
ben509 8y ago
I was going to agree entirely as I had been mucking with Powershell ISE and was surprised that it didn't have their normal standard of documentation, but I did find an okay reference online.[1] Looking more, it's kind of bad, because they break the sections in the reference up by the modules, and it's utterly mysterious what the modules are for. I mean, they all seem to be for doing incredibly obscure stuff in Windows, which I'm sure is useful, but I can't figure out obvious things like the syntax or types. This may be because the intended audience is liable to just copy and paste stuff and hammer away it until it works... [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/
- reificator 8y ago
  Over/under on that link working in five years' time?
jodrellblank 8y ago
What do you mean by "a normal operating environment"? Different versions of Windows came with different versions of PowerShell. Some can be patched to have the newer language features (Windows Management Framework 5.1 can be installed on Windows 7), but that won't bring in all the same cmdlets as Windows 10 has, because there aren't the required internals in Windows 7. If you have different things installed (Hyper-V, ActiveDirectory, any big Windows role/feature) you'll have different modules available, and if you install things like RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) then you'll get server management cmdlets on workstation operating systems. It's not so much like you download Python 3.6 and get one standard library everywhere, its origins are more in "companies managing their own Windows server estate", so your environment is not standard, it's whatever environment you have. The standard library, though, is mostly .Net, so depending on your Windows and PS version, it's ".Net Framework 4.5" (or 3.5 or etc.) for .Net framework library features accessed directly from PS. https://github.com/powershell/powershell https://github.com/powershell/powershell is PowerShell 6 / Core, which is a lot more like downloading Python 3.6 - there is everything a PSv6 environment will have, open source on Github and documentation in https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-Docs https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-Docs

reificator 8y ago

That is definitely true. Whenever I see a link to MSDN I assume it will probably be dead or redirect me to the homepage.

ben509 8y ago

I was going to agree entirely as I had been mucking with Powershell ISE and was surprised that it didn't have their normal standard of documentation, but I did find an okay reference online.[1] Looking more, it's kind of bad, because they break the sections in the reference up by the modules, and it's utterly mysterious what the modules are for. I mean, they all seem to be for doing incredibly obscure stuff in Windows, which I'm sure is useful, but I can't figure out obvious things like the syntax or types. This may be because the intended audience is liable to just copy and paste stuff and hammer away it until it works... [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/

reificator 8y ago
Over/under on that link working in five years' time?

jodrellblank 8y ago

What do you mean by "a normal operating environment"? Different versions of Windows came with different versions of PowerShell. Some can be patched to have the newer language features (Windows Management Framework 5.1 can be installed on Windows 7), but that won't bring in all the same cmdlets as Windows 10 has, because there aren't the required internals in Windows 7. If you have different things installed (Hyper-V, ActiveDirectory, any big Windows role/feature) you'll have different modules available, and if you install things like RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) then you'll get server management cmdlets on workstation operating systems. It's not so much like you download Python 3.6 and get one standard library everywhere, its origins are more in "companies managing their own Windows server estate", so your environment is not standard, it's whatever environment you have. The standard library, though, is mostly .Net, so depending on your Windows and PS version, it's ".Net Framework 4.5" (or 3.5 or etc.) for .Net framework library features accessed directly from PS. https://github.com/powershell/powershell https://github.com/powershell/powershell is PowerShell 6 / Core, which is a lot more like downloading Python 3.6 - there is everything a PSv6 environment will have, open source on Github and documentation in https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-Docs https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-Docs