So much was so right about PowerShell. But it failed to attract a wider audience, and in their quest to woo Linux devs Microsoft has been undermining PowerShell lately. Knowing what PowerShell offers, falling back to bash CLI tools feels like two steps back.
Just some of the stuff PowerShell did right:
- PowerShell cmdlets are self-describing and rich in information. Rather than each command doing its own parsing of parameters, cmdlets describe parameters and delegates the actual parsing to the shell. The shell understands data types, parsing rules, e.g. how to parse a UUID or a date. Not only does this ensure a consistency that was never in *sh shells, but it also enables cool stuff like e.g. autocomplete, predictive input, help instructions etc. almost for free.
- "Simulation" mode (-Confirm and -WhatIf) where a cmdlet can describe the action it is about to take, and the mode of the shell may decline everything (effectively a "simulation mode") or may actually ask the user for permission (-Conform) for each action.
But, alas, PowerShell never caught on outside Windows, and now MS is leaving it to wither in their quest to not upset a wider non-Windows community.
Just some of the stuff PowerShell did right:
- PowerShell cmdlets are self-describing and rich in information. Rather than each command doing its own parsing of parameters, cmdlets describe parameters and delegates the actual parsing to the shell. The shell understands data types, parsing rules, e.g. how to parse a UUID or a date. Not only does this ensure a consistency that was never in *sh shells, but it also enables cool stuff like e.g. autocomplete, predictive input, help instructions etc. almost for free.
- "Simulation" mode (-Confirm and -WhatIf) where a cmdlet can describe the action it is about to take, and the mode of the shell may decline everything (effectively a "simulation mode") or may actually ask the user for permission (-Conform) for each action.
But, alas, PowerShell never caught on outside Windows, and now MS is leaving it to wither in their quest to not upset a wider non-Windows community.