Don Jones Month of Lunches Day 1

Original article can be found here:  http://powershell.com/cs/blogs/donjones/archive/2012/03/01/will-day-1.aspx

Today begins an experiment with several PowerShell newcomers. Each will be reading through my Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches book, covering one chapter each day. Theyll be sharing their experiences right here. If youve ever wondered whether you can learn PowerShell, lets see how these folks do. Meet Will. The first chapter of a book always proves to be the most interesting for me. More often than not, the opening paragraphs sets the tone for the rest of the book. Learn Powershell in a Month of Lunches certainly did not disappoint as Don helped me connect a few dots quickly. Having become very excited about the possibilities Powershell opens up in terms of automation I tend to tell everything I work with—and even a few people who happen to be passing by—about what all it can do. Typically, however, folks seem unphased for the most part. When Don mentioned a shifting need to introduce Powershell not from a programming perspective, as worked with earlier languages (such as VBScript), but, rather, from a shell, management point of view something clicked.Most of the people I work with are either developers are sysadmins. I fall into a unique role of integrations and tend to be comfortable speaking both languages. Developers, on the one hand, will more than likely feel more at home writing their own tools and may not see the beauty of Powershells  simple power right away. Sysadmins, on the other hand, really could not care less about the depths to which Powershell can go.  They just want something that works.  Preferably, it will work right, every time, easily. So, seeing the need to speak to the audience I need to address in a way that connects to their needs really will help me refocus my evangelism efforts.While I feel pretty comfortable with most basic Powershell concepts one thing that I didnt really understand right away came clear when I read Bruce Payettes book Powershell In Action. Although it is a bit of word play Bruces comments, that an operating system has a kernel and a shell, helped me get the idea behind a shell. Just as seed has a kernel wrapped in a shell, so too—as the analogy goes—does the OS. When he wrote that way the concept of a shell made sense: the shell is a console-based interface for interacting with the kernel. In Windows, this means you can use Powershell to perform actions (and ultimately automate) from the console instead of GUIs. Had I understood that when I started reading and sharing Powershell with others it would have made it easier to see sysadmins just want to know what it can do as opposed to why.Also helpful for me were sections 1.4 and 1.5. Section 1.4 gives real clear, straightforward instructions for how to configure the test environment. Normally, these tasks are done for me, so, having it all laid out takes a load off my shoulders. I hate when I get into a topic and the author assumes you are already competent at some prerequisite task without giving hints as to how to accomplish what you need to get to the point in the text. Don really helps out by telling you what you need and how to figure it out if you never have before. Also, in section 1.5 you can find the exact links for the needed installations. I have blogged about these links myself, mainly, to have some reference to track them down later if I need them. Theyre right there for you.The last tidbit of info that jumped out to me was on the “Installing Powershell” DVD track.  Don explains that it is better to use the x64 instance of the shell and ISE. It took me at least two posts on Technet to realize that the x86 shell in Server 2008 R2, whose architecture is x64, does not always work as hoped.  Don was helpful enough to point that out right away so you can save yourself the time beating your head against the wall. So, as he noted in the video, unless you absolutely have to use an x86 module avoid it. I was confused as to how the paths and the architectures related. Run $PSHOME in both shells to see the difference and note the paths. Yeah, that 32/64-bit thing trips up everyone - including me. I wish Microsoft had done a better naming convention to differentiate. Looks like Wills off to a great start!