“Always use the right tool!” I learned this early on in boy scouts, along with, “Work Smarter, not Harder!”.
Scripting and Automation are becoming the norm in IT. Every year it seems like I am writing 150% more scripts than I did the year before. As an engineer and not a programmer, it was somewhat frustrating for a long time. I was using phrases like, “No, we will need to contract someone”, “Does the dev team have time for that?”, “I am not a programmer” and “I don’t code!”. I hate saying ‘no’, when it comes to technology. I am a creative person, I like finding easier ways of doing things, making things more automated, or efficient. As long as I didn’t have to code to do it. I prided myself on finding these creative niches.I finally just embraced it. Understood the ramifications if I didn’t get on the bandwagon and at least understand the code. It turned out that I really enjoyed it. I was going back to my QBasic, c# roots in high school. I ended up realizing that this is the direction of IT. Especially PowerShell. It is everywhere nowadays. And it can do almost anything you want. It has literally become my greatest tool. As an engineer or even and administrator in this industry, i believe you must know some PowerShell. Even if you are just one of the guys who Google’s scripts and pieces things together. I am still that guy and i have gotten pretty good. Again, I am no programmer…
As I start sharing some of my scripts and lesson learned around PowerShell, I will for sure be doing some things the “wrong” way. Help me out though. Leave a comment and/or suggestion. Help me help others.
HamsterLog 