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Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

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Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#41

Post by smackeyacky »

oefrha wrote: post #36
cobbal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mac user, I was going to provide a flippant answer, but I decided to look into it instead. Personally, I use zsh or a custom built shell scripting library inside swift. Always like to see improvements to shells though. Googled for it and got a dozen guides on how to install it in mac, but none that actually explained how to use it. (One video result looked like it might have some info, but to me that doesn't cou…

I'm certain I once wrote a long rant about why I think the concept of PowerShell (using objects instead of text as interface) is interesting but it fell flat on execution and felt like something in the uncanny valley between *nix shells and Python/Perl, with a thousand papercuts. I'm not gonna dig that out, but to add some points I can remember at the moment to yours: - Write-Output and friends try to be smart and pr…

And even the com integration is poor. Trying to script anything to do with Outlook is so failure prone and unreliable it turned me off powershell altogether.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#42

Post by pipeline_peak »

If I had to guess why, maybe because PowerShell is a little “busy”. It always feels unclear whether he was trying to make something similar to Unix Shell or a shell for the .NET environment. It’s greyed somewhere in between in a confusing and inconvenient way. Something as simple as a diff requires using objects, it just doesn’t feel like it was designed with SysAds in mind.

My guess was it had to do with marketing, sort of like how JS started off as a Scheme dialect, but higher ups enforced Java Syntax. .NET was pretty new at the time.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#43

Post by andrew_ »

I'd like to know why Snower accepted abuse from corporate overlords for 5+ years (according to the thread). Being "in the dog house" for that long is ridiculous on the surface. That would never stand in today's world of tech. Is he just oldschool and had the mindset of "the company is always right"? Is he just a company man with intense loyalty? I would understand the company not adopting it and having to spend five years advocating for new tech in a company that large. But I can't understand why being demoted and punished for 5 years. I grew up with a major emphasis on work ethic but I can't wrap my mind around this.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#44

Post by lloydatkinson »

yebyen wrote: post #29
lloydatkinson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powershell runs on Linux and macos too because of .NET Core/5+. The real reason is likely the same sort of people that are still typing Micro$oft in and keep spreading FUD that .NET isn't OS.

I have never heard anyone "spreading FUD that .NET isn't OS" but I have heard plenty of times from Mac and Linux users, "why would you want to use PowerShell" and I am mining this thread for answers, because I honestly don't know for myself. And it's objectively true that .NET/PowerShell is targeting Windows users, (which if you're Microsoft, why wouldn't you do that?) so, assuming that you don't care about interoper…

> I have never heard anyone "spreading FUD that .NET isn't OS"

Observe /r/programming or HN for long enough.

> .NET/PowerShell is targeting Windows users, (which if you're Microsoft, why wouldn't you do that?)

Azure, for one. Azure's primary and preferred method of interaction instead of it's UI is with it's API, which is also available fully wrapped up as Powershell cmdlets which again run on all three OS's.

> Setting up .NET is an investment, and learning to program it is an investment,

> make my customers install the .NET runtime at the proper version and fiddle with .exe files

You don't, you either get them to install it's APT .deb file or or wget the dotnet-install script. OR, you just build your app with .NET runtime packaged in .so file alongside your app.

Running the applications involves typing ./my-application which then runs the ELF binary. There is no .exe unless it's on Windows. It's the same install and run story that any of the other languages listed mentioned.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#45

Post by smackeyacky »

oaiey wrote: post #12
einpoklum wrote: post #3

Question for the PowerShell afficionados: Do you consider PowerShell to be "something we can count on to exist on Windows systems, in the absence of Bourne-like shells" - or is it "a superior alternative to Bourne shells which only got traction on Windows because Bourne is too deeply embedded in the Unix world"?

Bash as a shell is not so outstanding. It is the gnu tools and the other command line first Landscape. So bash on windows can never fly because these tools are not natively present (cygwin and friends are just awkward). So Powershell (and the new terminal) gives us this whole package with its build-in, service and windows provided commandlets. Consequently: bash will never beat PS on Windows except when someone provi…

WSL2 availability makes powershell redundant for most server oriented dev tasks.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#46

Post by luma »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #42

If I had to guess why, maybe because PowerShell is a little “busy”. It always feels unclear whether he was trying to make something similar to Unix Shell or a shell for the .NET environment. It’s greyed somewhere in between in a confusing and inconvenient way. Something as simple as a diff requires using objects, it just doesn’t feel like it was designed with SysAds in mind. My guess was it had to do with marketing,…

As a sysadmin, you can pull pwsh from my cold dead hands. Evrything being an object is a feature, not a bug. Going back to bash feels like going back a half century.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#47

Post by andrew_ »

andrew_ wrote: post #43

I'd like to know why Snower accepted abuse from corporate overlords for 5+ years (according to the thread). Being "in the dog house" for that long is ridiculous on the surface. That would never stand in today's world of tech. Is he just oldschool and had the mindset of "the company is always right"? Is he just a company man with intense loyalty? I would understand the company not adopting it and having to spend five…

No post body was provided.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#48

Post by phkahler »

EnKopVand wrote: post #26
omega3 wrote: post #5

I find this twitter thread frustrating. Q: What was the justification for the demotion? What became of the leaders that made that decision? A: It was stranger than you can possibly imagine I think the gist of the story is that he was assigned to work on X but worked on Y instead. Notwithstanding how great Y idea turned out to be it seems he was demoted for insubordination?

> it seems he was demoted for insubordination? Probably, and what management blunder that would have been if Jeffrey had left Microsoft because of it.

They would never have known. When you cook the goose, you get a nice meal but you never know about the golden eggs that never got laid as a result. Everyone thinks they did the right thing except for the goose.

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#49

Post by rufius »

einpoklum wrote: post #3

Question for the PowerShell afficionados: Do you consider PowerShell to be "something we can count on to exist on Windows systems, in the absence of Bourne-like shells" - or is it "a superior alternative to Bourne shells which only got traction on Windows because Bourne is too deeply embedded in the Unix world"?

The latter. I say that as someone who only works with nix systems for the last 5 years. I still write some powershell for stuff at home. I prefer Hyper-V as a hypervisor and use it there.

But the current state makes sense. Everything in Windows is COM, .NET, or a derivative thereof. Having a scripting language that natively speaks to these technologies in a flexible manner is a natural extension.

nix is a lot more of the file based stuff and so a shell language that makes it easy to run a series of tools that operate on text is natural (I.e. awk, sed, grep, xargs)

Re: Jeffrey Snower was originally demoted over PowerShell

#50

Post by WaxedChewbacca »

mjburgess wrote: post #18

I've often wondered why powershell hasnt taken off on linux/mac. I'd guess MS would have a good case for investing there (given, eg., linux usage on azure). Particularly in the recent history of "every day, another shell" on linux/mac. Powershell seems to solve the problem being resolved in rust,go,scala,... over-and-over. Why not just use that?

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