How do you use PowerShell? [closed]

Answer 1

I use it very little for actual dev work. I've used it to setup virtual directories automatically and execute a scipt that sets up IIS with the same settings on all our dev machines

Answer 2

Although I haven't learned how to fully use it yet, I'm a fan because it supports most (if not all) of the Unix commands I'm familiar with for navigating using a command line. If you have *nix experience and are developing on Windows, I would recommend using it for that simply because you'll only have to remember one set of commands.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, however. When it comes to building and compiling, I use the command line functionality.

Answer 3

I use it to start multiple processes, and for some things that cmd can't do.

Answer 4

@EdSwangren - If you have to work primarily on a Windows platform and work in the .NET space, I would whole-heartedly recommend putting the time in to learn PowerShell. It can leverage your existing .NET experience and code, works with COM, WMI, and ADSI. It allows you access to just about everything on the Windows platform (and that's just V1). V2 is under active development (CTP2 is available now) and will include more remoting, STA threading, and many other improvements.

Many vendors are also supporting PowerShell - from /n Software providing networking cmdlets, to Citrix and VMWare providing management api's via PowerShell.

Answer 5

I use it for IT Pro type stuff a fair bit (for which it's brilliant), but don't think I've used it much for development - occasionally for quickly trying out something like a String.Format. Something I will be doing is to develop powershell commandlets for some of our applications - to allow administrators to perform tasks like user management through powershell, but I don't think this is really what you mean.

Answer 6

Personally, I'm using Python for automating tasks, using WMI if needed. I think that this combination covers most of my needs.

I tested PowerShell, it looks fine to me, but it doesn't worth learning a whole new tool. Besides that, there are excellent resources online to master PowerShell if you need or wants to (PowerShell Live), or even recipes to accomplish tasks without having to pass the whole learning curve for yourself.