Old Habits Die Hard

So, finally I’m getting around to write down how I plunged into PowerShell scripting…

First of all, I’ll begin with my core statement for those who are still reluctant to learn PowerShell: don’t hesitate anymore! Once you’ve started using PowerShell you’ll realize that there was absolutely no reason to worry about. What’s more: “Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” (Party Animals http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283111/)

I must admit though that I’m one of those guys who actually DID hesitate. During the 90’s (as a Novell NetWare Administrator) I learned to get the most out of Batch files, and about ten years later (as a Systems Engineer and Consultant) I mainly used VBScript or a mix of VBScript and Batch. Once PowerShell v1 came out with Exchange 2007 I realized that this command-line and automation platform is a huge step in the right direction. With the first release of PowerShell Microsoft finally addressed the fact that an improvement had long been overdue. But… old habits die hard, am I right or am I right? 😉 For a period of roughly one year I found myself reverting back to the old ways on almost every occasion.

To cut a long story short, I did my first serious steps in PowerShell in course of a huge automation project in late 2008. The most important part of the commissioned work was the composition of a PowerShell-based IT process automation framework to build and manage a multi-tenant Citrix XenApp farm on top of the freshly baked releases of Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, and SCCM. At the end of the day it was one of the easier tasks in this project to learn PowerShell. Moreover it would have been even harder to build that solution without PowerShell. From a present-day perspective I wish back then we had the features of PowerShell v3 or at least v2…

Go for it! 🙂