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PowerShell from Microsoft is looking too alien on Unix. Just looking at the syntax I already feel uncomfortable. It's hard for me to criticize it because I hav

PowerShell from Microsoft is looking too alien on Unix. Just looking at the syntax I already feel uncomfortable. It's hard for me to criticize it because I haven't used it, but it looks like it was designed by a committee and overdesigned. I.e. it wasn't created from the need, like someone at Microsoft wanted to automate his work and created PS to solve his problem. It looks like some boss decided: "They have shells, so we should have it also. But we will make it much cooler. So, let's gather a committee of 500 of our best managers and let's decide what features it should have". It looks artificial and inconvenient to me unlike Unix shells. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm pretty sure that even syntax of PS makes it harder to type the commands. Unix commands are very short (many are 2-4 letters long), all lowercase and do not contain characters which are hard to type (e.g. `-`).

13of40 5y ago
> They have shells, so we should have it also The thought process was more like "You can either hire a dude to do it by mouse in MMC or you can get someone with a masters in CS to do it in DCOM. We need a middle ground." Source: was in the room
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Not OP, but: MMC = Microsoft Management Console, the collection of "snap in" GUI config tools for all the advanced features beyond Control Panel. MMC can control remote computers, but I believe only one at a time? Unless it's something through Group Policy. Now, the APIs exist to do all this remotely (DCOM), but good luck discovering what they are! And the minimum level of program you'd need to call them would be a C# project. So, Microsoft knew that UNIX systems had an API that was interactive, scriptable, discoverable, and composable, all the things which CMD and MMC and DCOM aren't. So they decided to build one. And make it object-orientated. It's actually pretty good for the administration use-case, but for more general work it feels weird. And it doesn't interact with text files anywhere near as good as shell does.
    - rjzzleep 5y ago
      Everything you say is accurate, but it doesn't really relate to his claim for the reasoning behind the decisions behind Powershell. That's what I was referring to when I asked for a more detailed elaboration.
      - 13of40 5y ago
        I worked in Windows Server on admin tools in the late 90s and 2000s, and watched the whole thing happen. I heard it summed up like that from Ballmer himself. I don't know what your alternative idea is - you think Microsoft was jealous of Linux and spent a hundred million dollars making a new shell just so they could feel proud?
    - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
      Some snapins can connect to multiple servers/computers at once, such as the DHCP MMC snapin. Others can't, like Event Viewer. IMHO Microsoft went all-in on the object-oriented paradigm and tuned the operating system to work with C++ ABIs and expecting administrators to use tools that use Microsoft or vendor provided DLLs.
gpvos 5y ago
Same for me, but looking at nushell, I'm not ruling out that they'll end up with something very similar to it. (I haven't used Powershell much to be honest.)
kaba0 5y ago
I’m sorry to say this but this is a very uninformed comment with way too many biases without any backing. > I.e. it wasn't created from the need, like someone at Microsoft wanted to automate his work and created PS to solve his problem Interestingly enough, it is used for automating Windows configuration. Re last paragraph: UNIX commands are random letters that are like that due to historical reasons — if you don’t know one exists, you can’t find it. And when you have to use {} in PS you are dealing with something you would do with awk sed with even more arcane syntax — PS is pretty readable with some knowledge on any PL. Also, they are Verb-Noun based so you can get around and find commands even offline (though Noun-Verb would have probably been a better decision). Due to the fixed syntax they can be shortened very well. Also, due to every “command” having the same conventions, arguments are properly done (no tar xf or -xf or —extract), they are reliably autocompletable without black magic, and they are also autocompletable by giving enough letters to make it unambiguous. So while I am not particularly fond of Microsoft, powershell is better than bash (though frankly, what isn’t?) in every conceivable way.
- anticodon 5y ago
  Yes, I haven't used PowerShell. And I agree that my comment is uninformed. It's just that I feel uncomfortable even looking at the PS syntax. Maybe it's idiosyncratic. Maybe I've spent too many years in Unix shell.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    I've used it and I can relate to the comment. Maybe your assumptions are off in there, but I think the main point you were trying to make is that it's complicated. It's so complicated that you really need a repl to be able to work with it efficiently. It's a bit like how programming Java is simple if you do it in Idea or back then in eclipse, but in a pure editor it's impossible to remember all the boilerplate.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      Can you write a bash one-liner that gets the free memory of your system? Is the awk blackmagic better than selecting an item of an object? Of course new things will be harder to write but it’s a people problem not something inherent with PS.
skissane 5y ago
PowerShell was started by a single person, Microsoft's Jeffrey Snover. As the project progressed other designers came on board but Snover remained (and remains) as Chief Architect. The design-by-committee allegation isn't being fair to him. Part of why PowerShell may seem not quite Unix-like, is Snover didn't just look at Unix as an influence. Snover's professional background included experience with IBM OS/400's CL shell and OpenVMS's DCL, and his experience with both systems influenced PowerShell's design.
- larodi 5y ago
  Once you start using PWSH, the design decisions are so obvious and make so much sense, that it is obvious Jeffrey Snover did have vast experience with variety of shells and languages. The idea to tie it with .NET and COM+ on windows is the best a shell has ever done, though someone noted in another thread that it is an old idea from XEROX mainframes (not sure what the name was). if you want to imagine this in terms of unix/linux - it would be something like having all libraries' APIs at disposal directly from a shell that passes structured objects. or python's REPL being more shell-usable or JVM having a shell that provides access to all classes in a click of ENTER. major downside of pwsh is that you can feel it being slower than expected due to the way objects are passed around, but I really expect this will be solved at some point with future releases as PWSH as language is still being developed so some concepts and internal architecture decisions perhaps change a lot. noshell is taking this idea to a fair level, but really, there is a reason to do some dev/devops work in PWSH because it will heavily impact all future shell development even if eventually superseded by something better.
  - rkeene2 5y ago
    If you want that same ability from bash, it's available [0]. However, it interacts with C FFI, so it's lower level. [0] https://github.com/taviso/ctypes.sh https://github.com/taviso/ctypes.sh
    - larodi 5y ago
      Sorry, but it's absolutely not the _same_ experience, but much harder and less integrated, Also let's not forget for a minute that bash tosses characters, and not objects. There's a very long road for any shell to get where pwsh is within MS's ecosystem (and even within .NET Core/GNU ecosystem). And I can easily imagine .NET Core wrapping DBUS and other COM-like facilities available for GNU OSs.
oblio 5y ago
I'm sorry, are you a shell user? Since when ~, for example, is easy to type and - is hard to type? LOL. First of all your backstory is wrong, it was a 1-person project. Then, about the features, all those long, explicit commands have short versions. Secondly, I agree that Powershell feels a bit alien on Unix, which will probably be the main reason its adoption will never be amazing.
- Macha 5y ago
  For a long time the Windows equivalent of ~ was %USERPROFILE% which was definitely harder to type than ~. Eventually they introduced the shortcut on Windows too.

13of40 5y ago

> They have shells, so we should have it also The thought process was more like "You can either hire a dude to do it by mouse in MMC or you can get someone with a masters in CS to do it in DCOM. We need a middle ground." Source: was in the room

rjzzleep 5y ago
Can you elaborate?
- pjc50 5y ago
  Not OP, but: MMC = Microsoft Management Console, the collection of "snap in" GUI config tools for all the advanced features beyond Control Panel. MMC can control remote computers, but I believe only one at a time? Unless it's something through Group Policy. Now, the APIs exist to do all this remotely (DCOM), but good luck discovering what they are! And the minimum level of program you'd need to call them would be a C# project. So, Microsoft knew that UNIX systems had an API that was interactive, scriptable, discoverable, and composable, all the things which CMD and MMC and DCOM aren't. So they decided to build one. And make it object-orientated. It's actually pretty good for the administration use-case, but for more general work it feels weird. And it doesn't interact with text files anywhere near as good as shell does.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    Everything you say is accurate, but it doesn't really relate to his claim for the reasoning behind the decisions behind Powershell. That's what I was referring to when I asked for a more detailed elaboration.
    - 13of40 5y ago
      I worked in Windows Server on admin tools in the late 90s and 2000s, and watched the whole thing happen. I heard it summed up like that from Ballmer himself. I don't know what your alternative idea is - you think Microsoft was jealous of Linux and spent a hundred million dollars making a new shell just so they could feel proud?
  - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    Some snapins can connect to multiple servers/computers at once, such as the DHCP MMC snapin. Others can't, like Event Viewer. IMHO Microsoft went all-in on the object-oriented paradigm and tuned the operating system to work with C++ ABIs and expecting administrators to use tools that use Microsoft or vendor provided DLLs.

gpvos 5y ago

Same for me, but looking at nushell, I'm not ruling out that they'll end up with something very similar to it. (I haven't used Powershell much to be honest.)

kaba0 5y ago

I’m sorry to say this but this is a very uninformed comment with way too many biases without any backing. > I.e. it wasn't created from the need, like someone at Microsoft wanted to automate his work and created PS to solve his problem Interestingly enough, it is used for automating Windows configuration. Re last paragraph: UNIX commands are random letters that are like that due to historical reasons — if you don’t know one exists, you can’t find it. And when you have to use {} in PS you are dealing with something you would do with awk sed with even more arcane syntax — PS is pretty readable with some knowledge on any PL. Also, they are Verb-Noun based so you can get around and find commands even offline (though Noun-Verb would have probably been a better decision). Due to the fixed syntax they can be shortened very well. Also, due to every “command” having the same conventions, arguments are properly done (no tar xf or -xf or —extract), they are reliably autocompletable without black magic, and they are also autocompletable by giving enough letters to make it unambiguous. So while I am not particularly fond of Microsoft, powershell is better than bash (though frankly, what isn’t?) in every conceivable way.

anticodon 5y ago
Yes, I haven't used PowerShell. And I agree that my comment is uninformed. It's just that I feel uncomfortable even looking at the PS syntax. Maybe it's idiosyncratic. Maybe I've spent too many years in Unix shell.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  I've used it and I can relate to the comment. Maybe your assumptions are off in there, but I think the main point you were trying to make is that it's complicated. It's so complicated that you really need a repl to be able to work with it efficiently. It's a bit like how programming Java is simple if you do it in Idea or back then in eclipse, but in a pure editor it's impossible to remember all the boilerplate.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Can you write a bash one-liner that gets the free memory of your system? Is the awk blackmagic better than selecting an item of an object? Of course new things will be harder to write but it’s a people problem not something inherent with PS.

skissane 5y ago

PowerShell was started by a single person, Microsoft's Jeffrey Snover. As the project progressed other designers came on board but Snover remained (and remains) as Chief Architect. The design-by-committee allegation isn't being fair to him. Part of why PowerShell may seem not quite Unix-like, is Snover didn't just look at Unix as an influence. Snover's professional background included experience with IBM OS/400's CL shell and OpenVMS's DCL, and his experience with both systems influenced PowerShell's design.

larodi 5y ago
Once you start using PWSH, the design decisions are so obvious and make so much sense, that it is obvious Jeffrey Snover did have vast experience with variety of shells and languages. The idea to tie it with .NET and COM+ on windows is the best a shell has ever done, though someone noted in another thread that it is an old idea from XEROX mainframes (not sure what the name was). if you want to imagine this in terms of unix/linux - it would be something like having all libraries' APIs at disposal directly from a shell that passes structured objects. or python's REPL being more shell-usable or JVM having a shell that provides access to all classes in a click of ENTER. major downside of pwsh is that you can feel it being slower than expected due to the way objects are passed around, but I really expect this will be solved at some point with future releases as PWSH as language is still being developed so some concepts and internal architecture decisions perhaps change a lot. noshell is taking this idea to a fair level, but really, there is a reason to do some dev/devops work in PWSH because it will heavily impact all future shell development even if eventually superseded by something better.
- rkeene2 5y ago
  If you want that same ability from bash, it's available [0]. However, it interacts with C FFI, so it's lower level. [0] https://github.com/taviso/ctypes.sh https://github.com/taviso/ctypes.sh
  - larodi 5y ago
    Sorry, but it's absolutely not the _same_ experience, but much harder and less integrated, Also let's not forget for a minute that bash tosses characters, and not objects. There's a very long road for any shell to get where pwsh is within MS's ecosystem (and even within .NET Core/GNU ecosystem). And I can easily imagine .NET Core wrapping DBUS and other COM-like facilities available for GNU OSs.

oblio 5y ago

I'm sorry, are you a shell user? Since when ~, for example, is easy to type and - is hard to type? LOL. First of all your backstory is wrong, it was a 1-person project. Then, about the features, all those long, explicit commands have short versions. Secondly, I agree that Powershell feels a bit alien on Unix, which will probably be the main reason its adoption will never be amazing.

Macha 5y ago
For a long time the Windows equivalent of ~ was %USERPROFILE% which was definitely harder to type than ~. Eventually they introduced the shortcut on Windows too.