Tangent: Could you explain why I might want PowerShell on MacOS or Linux, if I use those as my primary OS? (I usually only open my windows VM for checking that my websites work in IE 11).
Linux is actually half of our usage on PS Core[1], so it's a great question. A lot of folks use PowerShell inside of CI/CD pipelines, especially for cross-platform app development of .NET Core applications (having a single build/test/deploy script is often cited as vastly preferable to trying to maintain a split of .ps1/.cmd/.bat and .sh/.py/.rb).
But also, lots of folks prefer an object-oriented pipeline. Many of those folks (our primary use case for 10+ years has been IT management) are used to PowerShell on Windows and starting to learn or be exposed to other environments.
We've also got lots zsh-style optimizations in PSReadline. In some cases, we've got some catching up to do, but there's also lots of unique interactive optimizations hiding around[2].
It's also great for interactively exploring REST APIs and building scripts via that experimentation. Try running
And then look at all the properties you can explore:
$a | Get-Member [or gm]
$a.<tab><tab><tab>
Oh, and of course, one of the big reasons is "so you don't have to open a Windows VM to remote into your Windows Server boxes and manage them from a Macbook".
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but it'd take a lot more time to write about every benefit and scenario here. In any case, it turns out that our user base is pretty spread out among different scenarios, but between our repo and usage numbers, we've been really happy with how excited that such a diverse group of folks really love PowerShell.
And feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @joeyaiello if you ever want to talk more about your experience (or just hop into our GitHub repo). :)
This was far more detailed than I expected. You seem very passionate for PowerShell. The rest method exploration looks very cool, I knew I might learn something cool by asking. Thanks!
