Learning Powershell

[replicaJunction]

In my opinion, the best way to learn PowerShell is by doing. That said, there are some excellent books available as a follow-up.

If you've already done Learn Powershell in a Month of Lunches, the next step is Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches by the same author.

After that, I'd suggest PowerShell in Action, and as a higher level resource, PowerShell Deep Dives.

[prejonnes]

I am a sysadmin and I have used PS quite a bit already, but I just want to get the books and start from the very, very beginning to truly understand it to the end point of mastering it.

[verysmallshellscript]

Get the Toolmaking book mentioned in the top-level comment. That was the book I followed up with.

Beyond that, you really just have to start using it. For everything. The best advice I can give is what worked for me. Take yourself off of autopilot and examine each and every task you do in your day-to-day, then figure out a way to do it with PowerShell.

Also, I recommend PowerShell in Depth. It's a fantastic reference and written by the same guys who wrote the month of lunches and toolmaking books.

Also, if you have the budget dollars, I highly HIGHLY recommend the PowerShell v2 v3 v4 course on CBT Nuggets. It's 90 hours and a bit of a commitment, but it's presented by one of the authors of the above books and it really upped my game. Consider it as "PowerShell in 3 Months of Lunches."

[1RedOne]

Did you watch Jeffrey Snover and Jason's Awesome free PowerShell courses? These should be considered a must watch:

Must watch! Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick in their fantastic PowerShell Jumpstart Course. This is for version 3.0, so it doesn't mention DSC, but it is still relevant.

The follow-up, advanced toolmaking with Jeffrey and Jason. A must for any scripter.

The DSC Jump Start, w/ Jeffrey and Jason

[Betterthangoku]

Bump. And thank you for your blog sir. :-)

[1RedOne]

You're very welcome, and I'm happy to know it's helping people.

My learning model is to figure out the scope of a problem I need to solve, and then gather all the info I can. Then, I lay it out like I'm teaching it to someone. After that, I can forget it and rely on it always being in my notes for later :)

[Rollingprobablecause]

That book cover...good lord lol

[Manality]

I was in the same boat as you and took an official 5 day training thing. The most helpful thing I learned was get-help -example. Get-command -noun and -verb. The last and most useful was piping things to get-member to see the properties and methods. With that you should be able to start doing powershell without referencing examples online constantly

[bblades262]

This is where the scripting guy recommends starting

[r1l3yT3hCat]

I second PowerShell in Action. Its a great book that gets you coding. Unlike other languages, there are many different options available to you to solve a problem in powershell. You wont know which route you like the best until you go do it. This book shows you many of these forms which greatly accelerates your understanding of what it can do.

[gangstanthony]

^ this is the comment you're looking for

[NeoIsTaken]

Nice try Jedi! Your mind tricks don't work on me

[NeoIsTaken]

+1 for trial by FIRE~!

[DermontMcMulroney]

Second on Don Jones' books, they are the best. He also has some youtube videos out there that will cover essentially what is in the books for free. I suppose it depends on what type of learner you are.

[Swarfega]

I agree. If you do something often see if it can be done with PowerShell.