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Don Jones

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Don Jones avatar

Don Jones

371 articles  •  5 podcast episodes

1 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: Can You Have Too Much Help?

In The Scripting Games this year, more than a few folks took the time to write detailed comment-based help. Awesome. No debating it - comment-based help _is a good thing. _ But some folks felt that others took it too far. There were definitely scripts where the authors used, for example, the .NOTES …

4 min read

Is this list "Everything" in PowerShell?

Soooo…. it’s time for me to start looking at updating my various training materials (books, videos, courses, whatnot) for v4. I’m going to, with at least some of these, take an all-versions approach. I’ll teach what’s in v2, then cover what v3 added, then cover v4, …

2 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: Script or Function?

One of the most frequent comments in The Scripting Games this year was along the lines of, “you should have submitted this as a function, not a script.” Of course, the second-most frequent comment was something like, “you shouldn’t have submitted this as a function.” …

2 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: PowerShell Versions?

Today’s Great Debate is a bonus, offered from former team member June Blender. Take it away, June! Like several of the excellent debates in our Great Debate series, this debate issue arose during in Scripting Games 2013 when different judges used different selection criteria to evaluate …

2 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: The Purity Laws

This should be interesting. During The Scripting Games, I observed (and in some cases made) a great many comments that I’m lumping under the name “Purity Laws.” You shouldn’t use a command-line utility like Robocopy in a PowerShell script. You shouldn’t use .NET classes …

1 min read

Calling all PowerShell Teachers/Trainers

I’m in the process of building a referral list for teachers and trainers who work with Windows PowerShell. My goal is to build a “find a trainer” page here on PowerShell.org, with the ability for prospective clients to send an inquiry via email. This would be for customers seeking …

1 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: Credentials

Credentials suck. You obviously don’t want to hardcode domain credentials into a script - and PowerShell actually makes it a bit difficult to do so, for good reason. On the other hand, you sometimes need a script to do something using alternate credentials, and you don’t necessarily want …