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I have only recently started dabbling in PS with any degree of seriousness. Although for the past seven years I've worked in an almost exclusively Windows-based environment, I come from a Unix background and find myself constantly trying to "Unix-fy" my interaction experience on Windows. It's frustrating to say the least.

It's only fair to compare PS to something like Bash, tcsh or zsh since utilities like grep, sed, awk, find etc. are not, strictly speaking, part of the shell; they will always, however, be part of any Unix environment. That said, a PS command like Select-String has a very similar function to grep and is bundled as a core module in PS ... so the lines can be a little blurred.

• Unix is a file-based, (in general, non Unicode) text-based culture. Configuration files are almost exclusively text files. Windows, on the other hand has always been far more structured in respect of configuration formats--configurations are generally kept in proprietary databases (e.g., the Windows registry) which require specialised tools for their management.
• The Unix administrative (and, for many years, development) interface has traditionally been the command line and the virtual terminal. Windows started off as a GUI and administrative functions have only recently started moving away from being exclusively GUI-based. We can expect the Unix experience on the command line to be a richer, more mature one given the significant lead it has on PS, and my experience matches this. On this, in my experience:

  • The Unix administrative experience is geared towards making things easy to do in a minimal amount of key strokes; this is probably as a result of the historical situation of having to administer a server over a slow 9600 baud dial-up connection. Now PS does have aliases which go a long way to getting around the rather verbose Verb-Noun standard, but getting to know those aliases is a bit of a pain (anyone know of something better than: alias | where {$_.ResolvedCommandName -eq "<command>"}?).

    An example of the rich way in which history can be manipulated:

    iptables commands are often long-winded and repeating them with slight differences would be a pain if it weren't for just one of many neat features of history manipulation built into Bash, so inserting an iptables rule like the following:

    iptables -I camera-1-internet -s 192.168.0.50 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

    a second time for another camera ("camera-2"), is just a case of issuing:

    !!:s/-1-/-2-/:s/50/51

    which means "perform the previous command, but substitute -1- with -2- and 50 with 51.

  • The Unix experience is optimised for touch-typists; one can pretty much do everything without leaving the "home" position. For example, in Bash, using the Emacs key bindings (yes, Bash also supports vi bindings), cycling through the history is done using Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N whilst moving to the start and end of a line is done using Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E respectively ... and it definitely doesn't end there. Try even the simplest of navigation in the PS console without moving from the home position and you're in trouble.

  • Simple things like versatile paging (ala less) on Unix don't seem to be available out-of-the-box in PS which is a little frustrating, and a rich editor experience doesn't exist either. Of course, one can always download third-party tools that will fill those gaps but it sure would be nice if these things were just "there" like they are on pretty much any flavour of Unix.

• The Windows culture, at least in terms of system API's is largely driven by the supporting frameworks, viz., COM and .NET, both of-which are highly structured and object-based. On the other hand, access to Unix API's has traditionally been through a file interface (/dev and /proc) or (non-object-oriented) C-style library calls. It's no surprise then that the scripting experiences match their respective OS paradigms. PS is by nature structured (everything is an object) and Bash-and-friends file-based. The structured API which is at the disposal of a PS programmer is vast (essentially matching the vastness of the existing set of standard COM and .NET interfaces).

In short, although the scripting capabilities of PS are arguably more powerful than Bash (especially when you consider the availability of the .NET BCL), the interactive experience is significantly weaker, particularly if you're coming at it from an entirely keyboard-driven, console-based perspective (as many Unix-heads are).

I have only recently started dabbling in PowerShell with any degree of seriousness. Although for the past seven years I've worked in an almost exclusively Windows-based environment, I come from a Unix background and find myself constantly trying to "Unix-fy" my interaction experience on Windows. It's frustrating to say the least.

It's only fair to compare PowerShell to something like Bash, tcsh, or zsh since utilities like grep, sed, awk, find, etc. are not, strictly speaking, part of the shell; they will always, however, be part of any Unix environment. That said, a PowerShell command like Select-String has a very similar function to grep and is bundled as a core module in PowerShell ... so the lines can be a little blurred.

• Unix is a file-based, (in general, non Unicode) text-based culture. Configuration files are almost exclusively text files. Windows, on the other hand has always been far more structured in respect of configuration formats--configurations are generally kept in proprietary databases (e.g., the Windows registry) which require specialised tools for their management.

• The Unix administrative (and, for many years, development) interface has traditionally been the command line and the virtual terminal. Windows started off as a GUI and administrative functions have only recently started moving away from being exclusively GUI-based. We can expect the Unix experience on the command line to be a richer, more mature one given the significant lead it has on PowerShell, and my experience matches this. On this, in my experience:

  • The Unix administrative experience is geared towards making things easy to do in a minimal amount of key strokes; this is probably as a result of the historical situation of having to administer a server over a slow 9600 baud dial-up connection. Now PowerShell does have aliases which go a long way to getting around the rather verbose Verb-Noun standard, but getting to know those aliases is a bit of a pain (anyone know of something better than: alias | where {$_.ResolvedCommandName -eq "<command>"}?).

    An example of the rich way in which history can be manipulated:

    iptables commands are often long-winded and repeating them with slight differences would be a pain if it weren't for just one of many neat features of history manipulation built into Bash, so inserting an iptables rule like the following:

    iptables -I camera-1-internet -s 192.168.0.50 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

    a second time for another camera ("camera-2"), is just a case of issuing:

    !!:s/-1-/-2-/:s/50/51

    which means "perform the previous command, but substitute -1- with -2- and 50 with 51.

  • The Unix experience is optimised for touch-typists; one can pretty much do everything without leaving the "home" position. For example, in Bash, using the Emacs key bindings (yes, Bash also supports vi bindings), cycling through the history is done using Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N whilst moving to the start and end of a line is done using Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E respectively ... and it definitely doesn't end there. Try even the simplest of navigation in the PowerShell console without moving from the home position and you're in trouble.

  • Simple things like versatile paging (a la less) on Unix don't seem to be available out-of-the-box in PowerShell which is a little frustrating, and a rich editor experience doesn't exist either. Of course, one can always download third-party tools that will fill those gaps, but it sure would be nice if these things were just "there" like they are on pretty much any flavour of Unix.

• The Windows culture, at least in terms of system API's is largely driven by the supporting frameworks, viz., COM and .NET, both of-which are highly structured and object-based. On the other hand, access to Unix APIs has traditionally been through a file interface (/dev and /proc) or (non-object-oriented) C-style library calls. It's no surprise then that the scripting experiences match their respective OS paradigms. PowerShell is by nature structured (everything is an object) and Bash-and-friends file-based. The structured API which is at the disposal of a PowerShell programmer is vast (essentially matching the vastness of the existing set of standard COM and .NET interfaces).

In short, although the scripting capabilities of PowerShell are arguably more powerful than Bash (especially when you consider the availability of the .NET BCL), the interactive experience is significantly weaker, particularly if you're coming at it from an entirely keyboard-driven, console-based perspective (as many Unix-heads are).

• Unix is a file-based, (in general, non Unicode) text-based culture. Configuration files are almost exclusively text files. Windows, on the other hand has always been far more structured in respect of configuration formats--configurations are generally kept in proprietary databases (e.g., the Windows registry) which require specialised tools for their management.
• The Unix administrative (and, for many years, development) interface has traditionally been the command line and the virtual terminal. Windows started off as a GUI and administrative functions have only recently started moving away from being exclusively GUI-based. We can expect the Unix experience on the command line to be a richer, more mature one given the significant lead it has on PS, and my experience matches this. On this, in my experience:
  • The Unix administrative experience is geared towards making things easy to do in a minimal amount of key strokes; this is probably as a result of the historical situation of having to administer a server over a slow 9600 baud dial-up connection. Now PS does have aliases which go a long way to getting around the rather verbose Verb-Noun standard, but getting to know those aliases is a bit of a pain (anyone know of something better than: alias | where {$_.ResolvedCommandName -eq "<command>"}?)
  • The Unix experience is optimised for touch-typists; one can pretty much do everything without leaving the "home" position. For example, in Bash, using the Emacs key bindings (yes, Bash also supports vi bindings), cycling through the history is done using Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N whilst moving to the start and end of a line is done using Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E respectively ... and it definitely doesn't end there. Try even the simplest of navigation in the PS console without moving from the home position and you're in trouble.
  • Simple things like versatile paging (ala less) on Unix don't seem to be available out-of-the-box in PS which is a little frustrating, and a rich editor experience doesn't exist either. Of course, one can always download third-party tools that will fill those gaps but it sure would be nice if these things were just "there" like they are on pretty much any flavour of Unix.
• The Windows culture, at least in terms of system API's is largely driven by the supporting frameworks, viz., COM and .NET, both of-which are highly structured and object-based. On the other hand, access to Unix API's has traditionally been through a file interface (/dev and /proc) or (non-object-oriented) C-style library calls. It's no surprise then that the scripting experiences match their respective OS paradigms. PS is by nature structured (everything is an object) and Bash-and-friends file-based. The structured API which is at the disposal of a PS programmer is vast (essentially matching the vastness of the existing set of standard COM and .NET interfaces).

• Unix is a file-based, (in general, non Unicode) text-based culture. Configuration files are almost exclusively text files. Windows, on the other hand has always been far more structured in respect of configuration formats--configurations are generally kept in proprietary databases (e.g., the Windows registry) which require specialised tools for their management.
• The Unix administrative (and, for many years, development) interface has traditionally been the command line and the virtual terminal. Windows started off as a GUI and administrative functions have only recently started moving away from being exclusively GUI-based. We can expect the Unix experience on the command line to be a richer, more mature one given the significant lead it has on PS, and my experience matches this. On this, in my experience:

  • The Unix administrative experience is geared towards making things easy to do in a minimal amount of key strokes; this is probably as a result of the historical situation of having to administer a server over a slow 9600 baud dial-up connection. Now PS does have aliases which go a long way to getting around the rather verbose Verb-Noun standard, but getting to know those aliases is a bit of a pain (anyone know of something better than: alias | where {$_.ResolvedCommandName -eq "<command>"}?).

    An example of the rich way in which history can be manipulated:

    iptables commands are often long-winded and repeating them with slight differences would be a pain if it weren't for just one of many neat features of history manipulation built into Bash, so inserting an iptables rule like the following:

    iptables -I camera-1-internet -s 192.168.0.50 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

    a second time for another camera ("camera-2"), is just a case of issuing:

    !!:s/-1-/-2-/:s/50/51

    which means "perform the previous command, but substitute -1- with -2- and 50 with 51.

  • The Unix experience is optimised for touch-typists; one can pretty much do everything without leaving the "home" position. For example, in Bash, using the Emacs key bindings (yes, Bash also supports vi bindings), cycling through the history is done using Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N whilst moving to the start and end of a line is done using Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E respectively ... and it definitely doesn't end there. Try even the simplest of navigation in the PS console without moving from the home position and you're in trouble.

  • Simple things like versatile paging (ala less) on Unix don't seem to be available out-of-the-box in PS which is a little frustrating, and a rich editor experience doesn't exist either. Of course, one can always download third-party tools that will fill those gaps but it sure would be nice if these things were just "there" like they are on pretty much any flavour of Unix.

• The Windows culture, at least in terms of system API's is largely driven by the supporting frameworks, viz., COM and .NET, both of-which are highly structured and object-based. On the other hand, access to Unix API's has traditionally been through a file interface (/dev and /proc) or (non-object-oriented) C-style library calls. It's no surprise then that the scripting experiences match their respective OS paradigms. PS is by nature structured (everything is an object) and Bash-and-friends file-based. The structured API which is at the disposal of a PS programmer is vast (essentially matching the vastness of the existing set of standard COM and .NET interfaces).

I have only recently started dabbling in PS with any degree of seriousness. Although for the past seven years I've worked in an almost exclusively Windows-based environment, I come from a Unix background and find myself constantly trying to "Unix-fy" my interaction experience on Windows. It's frustrating to say the least.

I have only recently started dabbling in PS with any degree of seriousness. Although for the past seven years I've worked in an almost exclusively Windows-based environment, I come from a Unix background and find myself constantly trying to "Unix-fy" my interaction experience on Windows. It's frustrating to say the least.