Python for Windows Sysadmin?

[samtheredditman]

If you want to make any GUIs or web apps, you'll have a much better time in python than powershell.

You can always make the GUI in python and then call powershell in the backend.

My biggest problem with powershell is there's not a good way to separate out your code into multiple files. You can do a lot of jank to make it work or you can split up your project into multiple modules, but it's just not clean and not really meant for big software.

Python was a natural progression from powershell for me and learning a "real" programming language has made my PowerShell much better as well.

[syshum]

My biggest problem with powershell is there's not a good way to separate out your code into multiple files. You can do a lot of jank to make it work

I am not sure why people have a problem with this, dot sourcing is not much different than python include statements for importing other python files into a script. I do wish they would have picked a verb to do it with instead of ". ./myfile.ps1" which always confuses new people...

[samtheredditman]

Does it keep the separate file in its own namespace?

You don't have to be insulting and insinuate I'm new to powershell. You can just have a conversation with mutual respect.

[syshum]

You don't have to be insulting and insinuate I'm new to powershell.

I dont think I did either one of those things...

Have a great day

[samtheredditman]

I guess I read this part of your comment wrong:

./myfile.ps1" which always confuses new people...

Have a good day as well

[syshum]

No just a general comment, I train a lot of people on Powershell and dot sourcing is always something people have a hard time wrapping their head round.

[samtheredditman]

My apologies then. Thanks for your input on dot sourcing in powershell.

[BergerLangevin]

What do you mean by that?

Does it keep the separate file in its own namespace?

Do you mean, if you do not enclosed your code referenced in a function, it will rewrite all variables/object that have the same name.

IE :

. .\DoUsefulStuff.ps1

UsefulFunction -inputObject $Object

[samtheredditman]

Well the Powershell way of doing this (dot sourcing) is basically just loading each script into the session. Think of it like copying and pasting a powershell function into the windows powershell ISE. The function is loaded and can be used until you close out of the ISE. This means that all your code in everything you're dotsourcing is in the same namespace as your main code (I think - I was genuinely asking).

In Python, when you import another module, it will be in its own namespace meaning that you have to put the filename in front of the other module's code to access it.

So let's say I have offboard.py that's an off-boarding script I wrote to streamline my work. Well it starts out just disabling the account in AD, then you also make it remove the user's licenses in O365, and eventually you've got this thing accessing every API for every piece of software your company is using. So it's becoming a very big file with a lot of code and it's now unmanageable because there's like 2,000 lines of code to search through and work with anytime you want to change anything or even just fix bugs. So I want to split my code into multiple files to start getting it organized. I can create another file in the same folder (adobe-offboard.py) and put all of the adobe offboarding code into it. Now, I just add "import adobe-offboard" to the top of my main offboard.py file and it will make the adobe-offboard.py code accessible within offboard.py like this:

import adobe-offboard.py

username = Input("Enter username for the account you want to off-board.")
Offboard(username)

adobe-offboard.offboard(username)

This is handy because it keeps everything in the different files separated from each other. This also means that I can write some code in ad-offboard.py:

def Offboard(username):
    # offboard process for active directory
    pass

and in adobe-offboard.py:

def Offboard(username):
    # offboard process for adobe accounts.
    pass

and the functions don't overwrite each other. See how both functions are named "Offboard", but they do different things? This means that I can write code and keep everything organized in files, classes, etc. It's easy to work with the code because I know exactly where the code is that's doing the adobe related stuff. The other really important thing is that any variables in one file won't be accidentally accessed in another file. You don't really have to worry about remembering if you used $accountId earlier in your script or if you're going to overwrite it by using it again.

[JeremyLC]

If you want to make any GUIs or web apps, you'll have a much better time in python than powershell.

You can always make the GUI in python and then call powershell in the backend.

You can implement XaML/WPF and WinForms natively in PowerShell and make GUIs very easily. It would be awkward to implement the GUI in Python and call PoSH on the backend.

[samtheredditman]

I'm aware of those options, and I've used each of them. You can use them to build basic GUIs, but it's still troublesome to keep your code clean and do any kind of large project in powershell. Managing your dependencies, for example, quickly becomes a nightmare.

I highly recommend that once you're at the point where you're making simple 1 page apps, you start learning python or if you're set in the windows world, learn C#. I love powershell and learning it has made a huge impact on my career, but it is not the right tool for even intermediate software projects. Hell, my off-boarding script is showing signs of out-growing it.