Live data from Hacker News

PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

azure.microsoft.com

51–60 of 790 posts

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#51
post #5

Microsoft is projecting that the .NET ecosystem will become a main revenue driver, regardless of the underlying operating system.

Which is why I have no doubt the Universal Windows Platform will become the Universal Platform and be a true desktop/tablet/mobile/server/etc Java competitor on all major OS (mobile, traditional and server).

It must be rather frustrating for Microsoft to look back a decade or more and see they were sitting on the exact technology a hell of a lot of people said would be their future had they made it cross-platform from the start. I remember using C# for the first time around 2004 and thinking "god damn if this were cross-platform like Java it would kill Sun". Back then Microsoft couldn't see past the tip of their nose though.

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#53

Wow. I've been very impressed with Microsoft lately. They could have easily set themselves up as the next IBM, in the sense of being a monolithic corporation relying on corporate practices, but they've been spewing some crazy fun things that shows they're not out of the league yet. Might just be MY miscontrued perception that microsoft was becoming old/monolithic, but really excited with the direction they are headin…

Very much so. They're returning to their roots(winning over developers with world-class tools) and it's really refreshing to see.

Between this, VSCode and .NET Core it really is an impressive effort.

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#54
post #17
post #9

I'm always in favor of things being open-sourced, but I do kind of wonder in what universe I would use PowerShell when Bash is readily available.

As a full-time Linux user, I have to say that bash is overrated. For instance, on Windows I could press the up arrow through my history 20x to find a group of commands I want to run, press Enter, then press DOWN for the following command, then enter, then DOWN until I run them all. In Bash, I need to press UP 20x every single time. Yes, you can customize it a lot, and you can script it but default bash isn't that spe…

Bash is 27 years old. It was written to replace the Bourne shell, which is 39.

It is not terribly surprising that a 9 year old tool like Powershell made some improvements over an earlier tool that was already old enough to vote!

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#55

People laugh at me when I tell them I switched "back" to Windows after decades of Unix and Mac programming. But it's a really good, productive platform. Microsoft really seems to be heading in the right direction now. I hope .NET starts taking off on other platforms, too, because it really is a much better system than Brand "J".

If only they resolve the privacy leakage concerns in a reasonable manner.

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#56
post #17
post #9

I'm always in favor of things being open-sourced, but I do kind of wonder in what universe I would use PowerShell when Bash is readily available.

As a full-time Linux user, I have to say that bash is overrated. For instance, on Windows I could press the up arrow through my history 20x to find a group of commands I want to run, press Enter, then press DOWN for the following command, then enter, then DOWN until I run them all. In Bash, I need to press UP 20x every single time. Yes, you can customize it a lot, and you can script it but default bash isn't that spe…

You can use control-O for that, which does "execute this command as if I pressed enter, then when it's done bring up the following command in command line prompt". So if you have a set of commands to run that are 20 lines up in history, you can first find them (with 20x UP or by reverse-search), then just control-O control-O control-O control-O ... to execute them one after another.

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#57
post #39
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really so useful in practice? I have never used PowerShell before (nor do I have plans to do so in the near future), but I would imagine the downside is complexity, both for user and especially for developers. With text you just read and parse, while with objects you need to know the object type, its fields,... Whatever happend, I hope text stays here (and I have a bad feeling about it ever since I met system…

Objects are discoverable in powershell. Enter the object, and lists the object out as text.

Ok, that sounds good. But what if some developer decided that some field would have prefix "ABC" in all values, then the value I am interested in, then some value I am not interested in at the end? (you say this can't happen? Clue: WMI.) Can I take the value, convert it to string, make some magic on it and convert it to another object entirely?

I don't know, I never had any problems with text parsing. I love strong types in programming languages, but in system administration I think it would only get in the way. But as I said, never tried it, so I might be missing something.

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#58
post #17
post #9

I'm always in favor of things being open-sourced, but I do kind of wonder in what universe I would use PowerShell when Bash is readily available.

As a full-time Linux user, I have to say that bash is overrated. For instance, on Windows I could press the up arrow through my history 20x to find a group of commands I want to run, press Enter, then press DOWN for the following command, then enter, then DOWN until I run them all. In Bash, I need to press UP 20x every single time. Yes, you can customize it a lot, and you can script it but default bash isn't that spe…

In many bash configurations, ctrl-o is bound to 'operate-and-get-next’. If you hit up 20x, you should then be able to hit ctrl-o to run that command, and your history will automatically go to the next command down. Check it out, it’s great!

EDIT: beaten by pm215!

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#59
post #29

That is awesome. Truly an inspired set of changes at Microsoft lately.

Indeed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12305598

If people could be relied upon to maintain their own systems and apply security and other updates, this wouldn't be a problem. The unfortunate reality, is that they can't.

Re: PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

#60
post #9

I'm always in favor of things being open-sourced, but I do kind of wonder in what universe I would use PowerShell when Bash is readily available.

It is about Microsoft being a neutral player in a multiple platform world. Microsoft want people using their tools as it means they are more likely to use their platforms and services. Be it PowerShell on Linux or Bash on Windows or VSCode on macOS they want to make the best tools in the hope that it will push companies/developers towards Azure/SQL/Cloud as that is where the future for MS is.

Windows is on life support and they know this. The future isn't about companies buying hundreds to thousands of Windows licenses but an instance of an OS which is billed per X/month. They have seen businesses are more than happy to enter into such a model with Office 365 and The Cloud so it makes sense for them to move in that direction.

Post reply on HN