Hey, DaniWeb! I need your opinions.
I'm looking to expand my skillset, particularly in the Windows department. On a scale of "Eh, maybe later" to "Do it! Do it now!" what is your opinion on the importance of learning PowerShell as opposed to another life skill like Haskell, Mandarin Chinese, or subtropical gardening?
Or if you have other suggestions, I'm open to them.
I vote for subtropical gardening! At least it is warmer there than where I am right now (minus 3 F).
That said, shell scripting is important if you are going to do system admin cruft. Most of my work is in the Linux environment, so PowerShell is pretty much a non-entity, but bash, perl, and python are important. I would equate PS with bash most likely. Most of my scripting uses bash. Perl and Python give me a headach - especially Python's stupid indenting rules! Perl tries to do too much (as does Python). When I need to get that complex, I would rather code in C++.
I use Powershell almost daily for system administration and automation. I know of some Dev shops that use Powershell to power their continuous integration and continuous deployment efforts. I work in a mixed Windows/Linux shop and rubberman is right. Powershell gives a similar level of power to bash. As you get deeper into it you can start using the underlying .NET libraries directly, making it possible to do anything in Powershell that can be done in any .NET language.
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