Introduction

My history with Windows administrative automation goes back a long ways, at least to my 2003 book, Managing Windows with VBScript and WMI. A bestseller of the time, it put me “on the map” as someone who spoke about, taught, and wrote about Windows automation. It helped drive my first Microsoft MVP Award recognition in 2004, and made it natural for me to jump into Windows PowerShell—“Monad”—when it hit the scene in 2005.

I was honored to co-present with Jeffrey Snover at TechEd Europe 2006 in Barcelona, where Microsoft formally launched PowerShell and introduced it to the world. I wrote the first published book on PowerShell, Windows PowerShell: TFM (SAPIEN Press), and have in total written or co-authored close to a dozen books on PowerShell. Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches remains a go-to bestseller for newcomers, and PowerShell In Depth is still a top reference for PowerShell admins. I co-founded PowerShell.org, launched PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit with my partner, and was named “PowerShell First Follower” by Jeffrey Snover at the first Microsoft Ignite events in Chicago. I coined the terms “Toolmaker” and “Toolmaking” within the PowerShell world, and have been an advocate for strong practices and patterns. I even substituted for Jeffrey Snover as a speaker at the TechEd North American 2017 conference. Suffice to say that PowerShell has been an enormous part of my life and career.

Over the years, I’ve made a ton of good friends in the PowerShell community, which is easily one of the friendliest and most down-to-earth group of technologists I’ve ever met. My office has a small collection of the thoughtful, tongue-in-cheek mementos they’ve picked up for me: a CIA challenge coin, a Lego minifig of myself, a beer stein with PowerShell and Disney’s Figment character etched into it, and more. My career has taken me away from the day-to-day engagements with both the technology and that audience, but they’ve both been such a huge part of my life and career that I can never step fully away.

In fact, that was the genesis for this book. I just can’t let PowerShell go: it’s not only been important to me, it’s been hugely important and impactful to so many people in the industry. And yet PowerShell almost never happened. In fact, it “almost never happened” more than once; were it not for a team of passionate visionaries willing to make the occasional possibly-career-limiting moves, PowerShell—and all the positive impact it’s created—wouldn’t have existed. PowerShell might have just been a port of Unix’ KornShell, or it might have just been a WMI querying tool. Or it might not have been a thing at all.

There’s a lot of untold story under the shell, and it’s a story I wanted to tell. Much of PowerShell’s core team have moved on to other teams, or even to other companies. Nobody’s getting any younger. I felt it was time to capture their stories, and the shell’s story, while I could still track everyone down. Some bits of the story have been told at conferences or in other venues, but it’s never been pulled together into one place—and it’s never been told in its entirety.

If you’ve worked with PowerShell, then Shell of an Idea should provide some fascinating backstory to that tool. If you haven’t, but you’re at least conversant with computers and systems administration, then you’re in for a real treat. As much as possible, I’ve tried to wrap context around the stories so that you can see where they fit into the world, and what PowerShell struggled against and sought to solve.

I’ve also included a number of quotes, solicited through my blog at DonJones.com. These may seem out-of-context as I present them, but they’re intended to provide some of the background and context for the people that PowerShell has impacted the most. I’ve edited these as lightly as possible for length and clarity, because I feel that the effect of the shell’s story is just as important as the story itself. Here’s one example:

PowerShell changed my life…. I realize that such a statement may seem exaggerated, but every Powershell enthusiast can relate in some way to the overwhelming benefits, and career opportunities that learning PowerShell has given them.

I had worked in an operations management position for 5 years, and dreaded going into work everyday. The stress was awful, but the monotony was worse. I was 30 years old, had a wife, two boys under 2 years old, and living on my single income. I was afraid it was too late to change careers and find work I actually enjoyed. However, my older brother who worked as a system administrator for a large tech company told me about how he used Powershell in his job and loved it. He was a PowerShell enthusiast and thought I could learn it and open up an opportunity to change into the IT field. So he actually gave me the book he used that helped him learn, “Learn PowerShell In a Month of Lunches”.

That was about 6 months ago, and I was fortunate that an opportunity opened up at my current company in our IT department soon after I started learning. The little I knew at the time allowed me to get my foot in the door, but also gave me the opportunity to make an immediate impact and learn in a practical way.

PowerShell is easy to learn and is incredibly practical and useful in most every environment. Since I started, i’ve scripted automated tasks that run daily, created GUI tools for our Operations department, and many more things like interacting with web APIs and more.

I now love what I do, and I’m excited about the career and financial opportunities this new path will help provide for me and my family. I will forever be a Powershell evangelist and look forward to continuing to gain a more in-depth knowledge, and hopefully have the opportunity to teach and train others how Powershell can potentially change their lives as well.

—Aaron

How can you not want to read more of the story of a technology that can generate that kind of feeling? “Easy to learn,” “incredibly practical,” and “I now love what I do.” Those aren’t statements we often see all attached to a single technology, right? The journey to create a product that engenders those remarks… must be amazing.

It’s easy, as we sit in front of our monitors and tap away on our phones, to forget that the story of technology is a story of people. It’s about visionaries who see problems and try to solve them, who take on some small piece of the world and try to make it at least a little better. It can be difficult for us everyday folks to look at the end result and be impressed by it. What I hope you take away from this book, though, is that those amazing end results come in tiny, often-difficult steps. If you’re willing to take those little steps and push through the hurdles, you can make just as big of a difference. The people who brought PowerShell to life are just ordinary people, who shared a vision and worked hard to make it a reality.

This is, hopefully, their story, and I hope you enjoy it.
Don Jones