Chapter 5 Adding Commands
Super fun Chapter. The majority of the chapter was focused on modules and snapins. This was nice because although I felt I had the general overview of them previously, this chapter forced me to explore them a bit more than I probably would have otherwise.
The goal of this chapter though was discovering new commands to use. The lab set you to work with just a little bit of knowledge to go on and forces you to do all the sleuthing, which is something I really enjoy. Now although I didn’t technically run the command I was asked to I was able to find the correct command to run with all the relevant parameters I would need. I did not run it because it wasn’t a get command and it was a production box :(.
Chapter 6 Objects: just data by another name
I thought this chapter was great. I really get the feeling that this book is starting to get into the meat and potatoes of powershell, which is super exciting.
I really thought this was super funny…..
Upon asking the reader how they would go about something
If you’re thinking that you should use the Help command, then I’m glad, because I’ve certainly been pushing that down your throat for in the previous few chapter! Unforunately, you’d be wrong.
There was something that really disappointed me in this chapter. Don, explains to the reader that this book will not cover using methods that require inputs. This saddens me as that was something specifically I was hoping to get out of this book. Granted I understand his viewpoint, and his explanations, but it is still disappointing. It could also be that Windows 8 with Posh v3 will be integrated enough to where all those pesky .Net methods go the way of the dinosaurs.
I did really enjoy that to futher illustrate the concept of piping objects the book is going to have the commands and pipes on different lines. Like….
Get-Service|
Sort name, status|
Select Name, Displayname
Although I have never had an issue understanding what is in the pipeline, it is Immediately obvious how displaying one-liners on seperate lines would allow reader to grasp each cmdlet and their connection with each other better. It must be one of those techniques that just comes from teaching thousands of powershell students.
I did get-better(Its a Joke, not a cmdlet) with sort-object this chapter, because I never really seem to use it. This chapter was more of a review to me, than actual new material, however I found this chapter extremely engaging and just generally fun to read.
Chapter 7 The pipeline, deeper
As is becoming the standard I really enjoyed this chapter. I must say thought the chapter name is a bit dirty though. Heh atleast I thought so, but my mind can take anything and find something inappropriate. * | get-dirtythought
Which is the perfect segue into what this chapter is about. That being, figuring out what cmdlets accept what values coming down the pipeline.
This is very intriguing because it forced me to think in a way about pipelines which I really haven’t before. For instance, “Get-service |stop-service” works, but why does it work and how do other cmdlets work when piped together and when they don’t have the same “Noun”. Super cool stuff
Chapter 8 Formating- and why it’s done on the right
There was, as the chapter name implies, a nice discussion about the formatting and the rules for formatting. This was great, but because these Rules were just mixed in with the regular paragraph structure they didn’t stand out as much as they maybe. I personally got to Rule 3 and was like “Wait, where were 1 and 2?”, then I went back to find them.
You could say, I would have preferred the formatting rules to be in a format-table or format-list ( I am way too clever for my own good 🙂 ). This stood out even more by the fact that the very next section had bullets and nice formatting for its stand out points.
The chapter also introduces Format-wide, which I haven’t really used before. I found it to be really cool, and it seemed to me that it will be super useful to me in the future.
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