As someone who's career focused on Windows enterprise development from 1997 - 2010 the obvious answer would be Powershell for all the good reasons given above (e.g. It is part of MS' enterprise strategy; it integrates well with Windows/COM/.NET; and using objects instead of files provides for a "richer" coding model). For that reason I'd been using and promoting Powershell for the last 2 years or so, with the express belief I was following the "Word of Bill."

However, as a pragmatist I'm no longer sure Powershell is such a great answer. While it's an excellent Windows tool and provides a much needed step towards filling the historic hole that is the Window command line, as we all watch MS' grip on consumer computing slip it seems increasingly likely that MS has a massive battle ahead to keep it's OS as important to the enterprise of the future.

Indeed, given I find my work is increasingly in heterogeneous environments, I'm finding it much more useful to use bash scripts at the moment, as they not only work on Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X, but they also work—with the help of Cygwin—on Windows.

So if you buy into the belief that the future of the OS is commoditized rather than a monopolized, then it seems to make sense to opt for an agile development tool strategy that keeps away from proprietary tools where feasible. If however you see your future being dominated by all-that-is-Redmond then go for Powershell.

As someone whose career focused on Windows enterprise development from 1997 - 2010, the obvious answer would be PowerShell for all the good reasons given previously (e.g., it is part of Microsoft's enterprise strategy; it integrates well with Windows/COM/.NET; and using objects instead of files provides for a "richer" coding model). For that reason I'd been using and promoting PowerShell for the last two years or so, with the express belief I was following the "Word of Bill."

However, as a pragmatist I'm no longer sure PowerShell is such a great answer. While it's an excellent Windows tool and provides a much needed step towards filling the historic hole that is the Window command line, as we all watch Microsoft's grip on consumer computing slip it seems increasingly likely that Microsoft has a massive battle ahead to keep its OS as important to the enterprise of the future.

Indeed, given I find my work is increasingly in heterogeneous environments, I'm finding it much more useful to use Bash scripts at the moment, as they not only work on Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X, but they also work—with the help of Cygwin—on Windows.

So if you buy into the belief that the future of the OS is commoditized rather than a monopolized, then it seems to make sense to opt for an agile development tool strategy that keeps away from proprietary tools where feasible. If however you see your future being dominated by all-that-is-Redmond then go for PowerShell.