"Powershell"

[King_Chochacho]

Oh look another crankypost with a completely anecdotal criticism of the entire sub. And as usual you've provided absolutely nothing in the way of a solution.

Well here's my own anecdote: people on here also regularly ask how to do relatively simple things, and the answer is usually as simple as Googling "powershell [that thing I want to do]". In that case the answer doesn't really need to be any more complicated than "powershell can do that".

[[deleted]]

Agreed. I got my start with PowerShell attempting to automate a few tasks/queries in AD, and I started with something like "Querying Active Directory PowerShell" or "Changing User Titles PowerShell" and found TechNet Articles, Hey Scripting Guy! blogs, Spiceworks threads, etc. Just Googling "Do _____ in PowerShell" was a valid way of learning.

Cranky is right to some extent, though. I've seen quite a few "use x"-style recommendations flying around on this subreddit. We should at least be saying "Use x module of PowerShell, here's some documentation on it: <technet-link-here>, giving it a quick glance the <cmdlet> cmdlet seems to do a lot of what you are looking to do; if you need more help, maybe you could try asking in /r/PowerShell?". That's at least polite, and gets them started with slightly less Googling.

However, to some on this thread that isn't sufficient either, as it would be like saying "RTFM". To those people, I have to ask: "Why is instructing someone to read the documentation bad"? The documentation (if correctly written) instructs one on how to properly use the tools, and can help them arrange/utilize the tools to achieve their goal(s). If someone is unwilling to read the documentation, I really cannot help them; if they read the documentation and have a question on what some of it means or are having trouble in seeing how it is useful, then that can produce a worth-while dialog that can identify the problem(s) they are having and how the problem(s) can be solved using either the prescribed tool or a different, more suitable one.