I don’t think Python, a general purpose scripting language; and PowerShell, a shell, are going for the same things. They have different goals and by your definition every other tool is a “big miss” because they are not Python.
I have never desired to do xmlrpc, ocr, voice recognition, or gui building from my shell (and if I did I still don’t see how importing a C# library would be a big miss). What I do desire to do is open files, read their contents and pipe them into other programs, something that Python makes a pain to do with all the file handling. Powershell definitely excels at this, does that make Python a big miss?
I thought I was replying somewhere under this other side-thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40875610 which says "There are probably users in the millions that are ok at the basics of programming, but don't have the job role to where tools like Java or C# make sense. Python is usually a good fit here, but I really wish Microsoft had something written for us common folks and not just server admins and IT folks. If Microsoft put some more effort into PWSH to where it wasn't turtle slow at things like parsing files and then started adding things like what I talk about above. Maybe even cmdlets for statistics and science...it could be something pretty amazing that your typical business analyst could quickly use"
in that context C# library isn't fit for it. Yes I agree Python and PowerShell aren't going for the same things; that's annoying because PowerShell is 80% of the way there.
> "I have never desired to do ocr, voice recognition, or gui building from my shell"
I have wanted those things. Windows which has a built in speech recognition engine which is COM automatable, a shell (PowerShell) which can be a COM client, and I have a folder full of phonecall recordings. I have a folder full of photos with things like menus and road signs and I want the equivalent of strings.exe for OCR and PowerShell could almost do it. I've wanted to build a Delphi or VB6 or C# style drag-drop GUI and tried to do it in PowerShell with SharpDevelop, WinForms code, the ShowUI module. I've wanted to build a TUI but Windows console host isn't good at those. I've wanted to get jpg metadata out and done it with Shell.Application automation around Explorer instead of downloading mediainfo.
All these thing have something in common - a core in a low level language, glued together or scripted in a high level language. Microsoft have written the core. They have written the high level language. They just didn't bother to make it all integrated for the ordinary power user, or flesh it out with more features along those lines over the years.
> "if I did I still don’t see how importing a C# library would be a big miss"
Because, compared to a builtin "ConvertFrom-Speech" you have to be enough of a programmer to know you need C#, go looking for a package, navigate oneget/winget/psget/nuget/github to download it, worry about .NET version compatibility and module paths, work out how to add an assembly, and then deal with interop, [ref] parameters, byte arrays, streaming.
> "What I do desire to do is open files, read their contents"
Same. And the contents could be all common formats on Windows since the 1990s - MP3, JPG, Excel - things Windows can read and play, things Explorer can read metadata from.
> "and pipe them into other programs, something that Python makes a pain to do with all the file handling. Powershell definitely excels at this, does that make Python a big miss?"
Yes, I think PowerShell is a far more convenient REPL than Python's REPL. Than any REPL I know of, actually - within the boundaries of introspecting small simple data, PowerShell and .NET at least. And yet Python has set()-set() and PowerShell has [system.collections.generic.hashset[psobject]]::new().ExceptWith() (it doesn't return anything it mutates in-place) and every week, people post on the internet asking how to do essentially set union, intersection, subtraction and equality checks in PowerShell and the answer has been unsatisfying for decades.
Adding packages is `dotnet add package {PackageName}`. That's it.
Worrying about version compatibility for new projects has stopped being an issue. The package either targets NS2.0 or whatever latest LTS currently is, in which case you just add its reference, or it doesn't in which case you use something else.
If it does, in 98% situations it just works. In the last 2% it has native dependencies which means either a) the package ships with binaries built for all popular platforms, b) the package adds a platform-specific dependent package automatically, or manually and mentions that in README (either with dotnet add package or system-wide library, apt-get install and friends), or c) the package comes with windows only native dll, which happens with ancient unmaintained packages, it's a rare case nowadays fortunately.
As someone whose primary PL is C#, I found https://github.com/waf/CSharpRepl and https://github.com/dotnet-script/dotnet-script far more accessible and useful. Compilation caching for the latter works relatively well to make startup latency tolerable for using it for writing scripts over Python. It's not the smoothest ride, but the advantages of C# make up for this.
Or I just do `dotnet new console -o MyScriptName --aot`, echo code into Program.cs and `dotnet publish -o .` it. Some do that with Rust as well. Especially useful if you need your script to go through a lot of data quickly and parallelize that well too.
I have never desired to do xmlrpc, ocr, voice recognition, or gui building from my shell (and if I did I still don’t see how importing a C# library would be a big miss). What I do desire to do is open files, read their contents and pipe them into other programs, something that Python makes a pain to do with all the file handling. Powershell definitely excels at this, does that make Python a big miss?