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Microsoft PowerShell RC1
rst+ack writes "Microsoft has released RC1 version of PowerShell the .NET-based shell with perl-like syntax previously known as Monad or MSH. PowerShell (PS) has been covered a few times on Slashdot. Contrary to cmd.exe and Unix/Linux shells it operates on objects, not text when passing data between scripts and executables. Easy access to .NET classes allows users to create quite advanced solutions in short time. PS won't be shipped with Vista or Windows Server 2007 but it will debut with Exchange 12."
Well ... to take the position of "Devil's Advocate" for a minute, if they just extended bash to have C# scripting, then you'd have lots of people on this forum yelling how they are perverting the standard and that this is just aploy for them to embrace and extend the existing shell language.
.Net
.Net bindings for Perl, that may be an even better choice for a scripting language.
Look at it from MS's perspective:
1) They know they need a shell like language to handle sys admin type functions.
2) They've just put a lot of effort into
3) Most of the MS Admins out there believe VB is the tool of choice.
Given those suppositions (feel free to argue about their reality, but remember that I'm discussing it from MS's viewpoint), a scripting language that fullfills (1), takes advantage of (2) and leverages (3) seems like a no brainer, even for them.
Of course, considering that there are
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Although I haven't played with it, I've read a bit about this shell, and there was something that bothered me about it, and I finally just put my finger on it: this thing was designed by programmers.
.Net libraries are vast and complex... looking at some of the sample msh scripts, I understand how a windows programmer would think they were an amazingly powerful simplification, but damn there's a lot I have to know to get basic things done.
.Net code in my life, I see almost nothing familar when I read .msh scripts. It appears to require an entirely new body of knowledge to do simple things, and bears little or no relationship to the interfaces and paradigms I use day to day. Yes, I know those interfaces are graphical. Seems to me there's bound to be some way to do it (or would be if there were any logic or consistency to the organization of the everyday administative interfaces in Microsoft's products).
I know that the line between "programmer" and "system administrator" is often blurry. And the line between "shell" and "interactive script interpreter" is as well. But when you start requiring people to understand concepts like objects (which may seem like old hat to a programmer), you're already presuming a relatively sophisticated understanding that an "average user" has no grasp of. And the
Ye olde csh and sh are great because they provide a simple way to put programming logic around the set of operations users spend their entire day in and are already familiar with. The learning curve is very incremental: you can master the basic UNIX commands, and then start to add in variable subtitutions (!$ anyone?) and loops (foreach) and such as needed.
In other words, the jump from basic UNIX user knowledge to simple scripting is very small, because the scripting is presented in *exactly* the same context and using the syntax the user does day-to-day work in. But as a competant windows admin who doesn't know VB and hasn't written a line of
Don't get me wrong... I understand that the goal of an intuitive scripting tool is in many ways at odds with providing a rich and powerful development environment that can complete with something like perl, but I had hoped there was something a little closer to "ground level" coming.
-R