Tag Archives: Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches

How Do I Start to Learn PowerShell?

I’ve been around the Windows PowerShell community awhile, and its various forums, and have noticed a consistent theme: People often ask how and what to use to learn PowerShell. There’s plenty of articles and other content out there — ten years’ worth now — and people still ask. While I began this site to help teach PowerShell, depending on the day, it may not always the best place to start. So, what is?

There’s two things I’ve often recommended to help people learn PowerShell. One is what I would consider to be the de facto standard of all introductory PowerShell reading, Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition written by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks and published by Manning Publications.

I read this book after I had already spent a couple years learning PowerShell. While I appreciated seeing what I missed in my own education, I realized with every page turn that I could’ve learned everything I knew, in a lot less time. All I would’ve had to do was buy the book first, and make a commitment to read it. If you’re new to PowerShell and you suspect that you’re going to be a Windows system administrator in the future, then buy it and read it now, before you end up hating yourself for not doing it sooner. Let me know if I get the cue to tell you, “I told you so,” or not. I hope I don’t.

The other thing I’d recommend are two video series found on Microsoft Virtual Academy. This really helped solidified some concepts. The first one is called Getting Started with PowerShell 3.0 Jump Start. The second series, to be watched after the first, is called Advanced Tools & Scripting with PowerShell. 3.0 Jump Start. While these both focus on PowerShell 3.0, they are both still quite relevant to the current release (PowerShell 5.0, at the time of this writing). I’m not sure which I’d recommend you do first — the book or the videos — as I’m not sure if one sequence would be better than the other. Either way, do both as they ensure a good amount of beneficial exposure.

There you go. These are my two, top recommendations for learning Windows PowerShell. It should be said, that in addition to these two, one of the things I did (and I’ve said it several times now), is ensured I learned at least one new thing about PowerShell every day (no matter how big or small, or what day it was). PowerShell is an important part of the future as a Windows system administrator, whether or not, you believe that right now.

A Quick, Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Review

I’ve been using, and continuing to learn, Windows PowerShell for a while now. While I’ve used various resources to promote my learning and understanding, I had never sat down and actually read a PowerShell book, front to back. Well, now I have.

While I knew upwards of 95% of the content, I went ahead and read Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks. I have followed both authors in the past and was certain this would be a good title to start with—it was. In fact, being familiar with these two authors was why I was able to recommend this title, even long before I read the book myself. A bit backwards perhaps, but undeniable true. It’s a wonderfully, comprehensive guide to getting started with Windows PowerShell. As stated by Bennett Scharf, on the back cover, this in fact will be an extremely useful reference. With a generous and complete index, I will be able to easily pull up the concepts I read about in this book, whenever necessary.

Besides being able to say I’ve read the title (and with a good conscience, get it signed by the authors at the PowerShell Summit North America 2015 in April), I wanted to make sure that my method of learning PowerShell was in fact complete. I’ve learned PowerShell by reading help files, blogs, and articles posted to Twitter, as well as, trying things in the shell (this is key), and helping people on PowerShell forums. Even so, I wanted to be sure I hadn’t missed some of the fundamentals. I know many of the ‘hows,’ but was worried I may have missed a ‘why’ along the way. Like, why does it (PowerShell) do it this way?

My first, favorite part was the discussion on pipeline parameter binding. Parts of that topic never just came to me, and it is a concept that requires a complete understanding. The fantastic explanations in the book (chapter 9) have helped ensure I won’t have any questions about this concept again. After all my non-book learning, I never once read anywhere that you can only have one ByValue per cmdlet, even though it makes perfect sense as to why.

The second part that I greatly appreciated was the Regex (Regular Expressions) review. For whatever reason, I have the hardest time cementing these in my mind, and often find myself in need of a quick review. Knowing this book will spend all, or most, of it’s life after this weekend sitting with me at the office, will allow me to get a quick refresh when that’s required. It can be a scary concept for many, and this book laid it out in a quick and calm approach. I wish I read this the first time I was introduced to Regex. No kidding, but I folded down the top corner of this page—something I just don’t do to my books.

In the end, I will continue to recommend this book to people starting out with PowerShell. It explains PowerShell from the start, up to your first parameterized script. I had already purchased the toolmaking followup, Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches, even before I started this one, and plan to start reading it tomorrow. I left my copy in my office and so, sadly, I couldn’t start sooner.