I just recently finished version 1 of a project that hosted a PowerShell runtime to execute tasks on remote systems. I disagree wholeheartedly that PowerShell is not a dev's tool.
As a .NET based product, it is a direct analogue to .NET programming. Whole .NET programs can be prototyped in PS, as well as little oneliners to test functionality of methods...etc. That the language architects for PS specifically designed PS's syntax to be close to C#, means there is very little context switch when writing PS scripts and C# code(something I had to do alot recently). You're building on your knowledge already hard won with .NET languages, using PS.
As an automation tool, it is superb. It access's WMI, ADO, ADSI, .NET, COM natively, plus can be spot-welded to work with anything else. This alone makes any Windows automation easier and more powerful. The amount of access to the system is paralled by some other langauges (VBscript, Python) but the ease of use of the language and the benefit of the .NET framework means that some PS scripting is tying together existing code (code reuse) instead of wasting your time writing yet another file zipping routine (for example...)
There are already projects out there that are making build tools (psake comes to mind) to make dev's life easier. Projects like Powershell Community Extensions show the powerful extension capabilities normal every-day devs can achieve. I agree with some of the posters above, I consider anything done to setup build envrionments or work with data for dev tasks, can be done with PS, if not faster/easier/better, but just as well.
James
