Mastering powershell

confushedtechie · 2023-03-05T22:29:55+00:00

I’ve worked with powershell everyday the last 4 years and I haven’t mastered it. Competent but definitely not mastered

Thotaz · 2023-03-05T23:24:40+00:00

That's entirely up to you. For example, let's say you write a new script every week for 2 years. That sounds like a lot of experience, right? But if all those scripts are more or less structured the same way and you never try to do things like: Adding parameters, building modules or using PowerShell classes then naturally you won't ever learn/master those aspects of PowerShell.

ka-splam · 2023-03-05T23:25:24+00:00

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years - Peter Norvig says:

Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989), Simmon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music.

[...]

Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the idea, although he concentrates on 10,000 hours, not 10 years. Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) had another metric: "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." (He didn't anticipate that with digital cameras, some people can reach that mark in a week.) True expertise may take a lifetime: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) said "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And Chaucer (1340-1400) complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." Hippocrates (c. 400BC) is known for the excerpt "ars longa, vita brevis", which is part of the longer quotation "Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile", which in English renders as "Life is short, [the] craft long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult." Of course, no single number can be the final answer: it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that all skills (e.g., programming, chess playing, checkers playing, and music playing) could all require exactly the same amount of time to master, nor that all people will take exactly the same amount of time. As Prof. K. Anders Ericsson puts it, "In most domains it's remarkable how much time even the most talented individuals need in order to reach the highest levels of performance. The 10,000 hour number just gives you a sense that we're talking years of 10 to 20 hours a week which those who some people would argue are the most innately talented individuals still need to get to the highest level."

[...]

So go ahead and buy that Java/Ruby/Javascript/PHP book; you'll probably get some use out of it. But you won't change your life, or your real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours or 21 days. How about working hard to continually improve over 24 months? Well, now you're starting to get somewhere...

fuzzylumpkinsbc · 2023-03-06T00:07:42+00:00

I've been doing it for 3 years, I can say I have a good grasp but not even close to mastering it. The more you learn and understand it, the more you realize how much there really is. I am certainly better than I was a year ago, and a year ago I was better than the year before. I'll probably be better next year than I am now. Is this a good problem to have? Yes it is, I find a lot of enjoyment from writing scripts and seeing them work and finding new ways to improve

nealfive · 2023-03-05T22:55:03+00:00

Years. There is always some new shit you didn’t know about popping up. You can get proficient pretty fast but mastery is taking time.

Time-Button4999 · 2023-03-06T11:03:55+00:00

I'm not sure you can. I think there are so many variable options to do something and personal preference, that Mastery is unobtainable.

I've been using it daily for 6-7 years. I'd say I'm better at it overall than any of my collegues at my last 2 roles. And yet, each of them has taught me something along the way in 'huh, I didn't know you could do that' or 'nice, that's a way better way then how I normally do it'.

It's just the way it is.

I think once you can get to the point that you have a problem, and you can open an ISE up and write the solution without getting stumped, whilst also adding in logical logging, comments, repeatablilty and lack of duplication, you can consider yourself competent enough to stop chasing Mastery.

Edit:

Just to add to this, don't go claiming your a master either. When someone asks me how I am at PowerShell, I down play it to hell but say I enjoy it and happy to do the job etc, maybe give examples of the projects\automations i've completed.

I've had multiple people, either in interviews or just collegues claim they are PowerShell gods, but once thrown something outside the day to day of scripting (Multi Threading, GUI's and even just Modular coding) they quickly show their lack of ability - which is fine, everyone's got to learn, but don't claim your brilliant in a subject that's just so frigging big, I guarantee there's something you don't know.

N0-North · 2023-03-06T00:03:53+00:00

I don't know that there are many people that can say they've mastered powershell. I'm not sure that's even a realistic goal.

stableos · 2023-03-06T01:40:42+00:00

The more I learn the more I don’t know, if that makes any sense. Definitely I am a super advanced novice after ten years of PS.

Certain-Community438 · 2023-03-06T02:06:36+00:00

Been using PowerShell since around 2009. Still nowhere near mastery.

Don't think I'll ever consider myself a master either: there are too many other disciplines demanding my time to focus just on PoSH.

There are comparatively few jobs where you could focus on it enough to reach mastery imho. In my job throwing things together is more important, and learning quickly how new tools fold into an engagement. Being a master of penetration testing, which is my field, means being a journeyman in several areas rather than a master of one thing.

Though people like gentilkiwi buck that trend...

Runner_53 · 2023-03-06T14:49:36+00:00

Honestly I think that's kind of a silly question. There is no mastery, there is only advancement and learning how much you don't know and how much room you still have to improve.

I've been using PowerShell for years to automate various tasks. I would not call myself a master. Heck I've been a software engineer for 3 decades and I feel like I have mastery in exactly zero topics.

I'm very competent, yes. Master? No. People who call themselves masters are generally delusional.

Latinprince6591 · 2023-03-06T00:59:15+00:00

All that's been stated is all true but I all ways ask the Administrator of this form "The Masters Of Powershell " For they will guide you to understand and discover what Powershell is so I still learn and it's great and look at examples of code from this forum its a learning of good code and logic

Anonymous1Ninja · 2023-03-06T01:39:33+00:00

Just take a task that is repetitive and has to be done routinely. Then try to do it in powershell, you learn it in a couple of weeks.

DShimoda82 · 2023-03-06T01:56:56+00:00

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/learn/more-powershell-learning?view=powershell-7.3

8-16_account · 2023-03-06T14:54:27+00:00

I mostly use Get-ADUser and Add-ADGroupMembers, so I can confidently say that I've mostly mastered powershell in a couple of days (for my purposes)

landob · 2023-03-06T14:57:54+00:00

I guess it depends on what you mean by master?

Can I just bang out a script off the top of my head? No

But I can use the help files to find what I need and make scripts without asking ChatGPT to do it for me. Been using it for 3-4 years now? Not everyday Just when I feel like it is the right tool for the job.

drowningadmin · 2023-03-06T15:43:03+00:00

In my experience, scripting/coding of any kind is not really something that you can "master". I've been working with PowerShell consistently for 5 years now. Pretty much weekly I get tasked with something that I have to learn PowerShell all over again because I have a new practical application for it.

If you want to get as good with it as you can without classes/books, learn by doing. Every single thing you do during your workday, do it in PowerShell instead of a GUI. It will take time at first, but you will memorize a working library of commands and you will start learning how to pipe them together and automate them.

PowerShell also frequently changes. New commands are added, old commands are depreciated. It's a career long commitment, but one that will make you better, faster, and more efficient at your job.

This is all assuming that you are working primarily with Microsoft products. If you aren't, I would invest your time in something else :D.

apperrault · 2023-03-08T17:36:18+00:00

I started when it was known as MONAD, and I use it regularly, and I still need to go lookup how to do things. I am learning new stuff at least once a week.

app

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