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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • This blog does a fairly straight-forward job on explaining the basics. For me, I learn best in an interactive 1:1 or well-constructed video, so ChatGPT was priceless. I could ask it stupid questions all day long, and after throwing some different ideas around I started to see the essential parts and just let my prior knowledge of PS, .NET, and C# WPF take it from there.

    At the end of the day, all that really matters is using the PresentationFramework assembly and creating a window:

    • Add-Type -AssemblyName PresentationFramework
    • Either use Visual Studio > WPF Project and make the UI you want. Take the XAML file and use PowerShell to get the raw content:
      • $Xaml = Get-Content -Path MainWindow.xaml -Raw
      • $SanitizedXaml = $Xaml -replace “bad syntax e.g. Foreground={x:Null}” "Foreground=“Transparent” # Certain XAML syntax is incompatible with PS XML
      • [xml]$XmlReader = [System.Xml.XmlNodeReader]::new($SanitizedXaml)
      • $Window = [Windows.Markup.XamlReader]::Load($XmlReader)
    • Or, use .NET-style syntax in PS directly:
    • Then show the window:
      • $Window.ShowDialog() | Out-Null


  • Python is always something I intend to learn but never get around to. Does it natively handle GUI for process tooling or does it require a third party? What makes PowerShell so useful to me is the native ability to create visual applications without the need to compile. I can create tools for my company that launches right out of ConfigMgr Software Center and other technicians can contribute without needing a programming background.

    At home I want to mess around with tooling for home services without having to resort to web development.


  • By far it’s the object pipeline. Having structured data makes it easy to automate workflows in a predictable way. With bash everything is a string, so everything has to be parsed. It’s tedious.

    It took about a year of steady use before I came to enjoy the syntax. It shines in a production environment with other cooks in the kitchen. I never got into the C style, I like my code human readable at a glance. It’s fine if everyone’s a sage but we have a team with a mixture of skill levels and for me PowerShell gets it right.