Directory Services/Active Directory

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner's Blog
Powershell's social responsibility

The world is not as polite anymore as it was years ago. People are forgetting what was called “good behavior / manner”. And Powershell is entering the world and starting to monopolize in the world of scripting languages.

I think Powershell should show some level of social responsibility. And today, I’m taking action to change it:

I, Ulf B. Simon-Weidner, propose hereby that Powershell should be forced to show more social responsibility. Therefore I propose two actions:

  1. Any command executed should, by default, set the –whatif parameter
    (This would prevent the commands from executing, it'll only tell us what it would do)
  2. To really execute a command, the –please Parameter must be used, which will revoke the –whatif parameter.

Wouldn’t this be nice?

Published Tue, Sep 15 2009 15:20 by Ulf B. Simon-Weidner

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Comments

# re: Powershell's social responsibility@ Tuesday, September 15, 2009 8:43 AM

I imagine this as the same world, where when you try to do something, the UI experience is like this:

"Are you sure?" [yes]

"Are you really sure?" [yes]

"Are you really, really sure?" [yes]

Having personally been responsible for multiple domain-wide issues, there is no amount of "social responsibility" that will prevent a determined administrator from doing something dumb.

Though I will admit, I'm a big fan of the -whatIf concept... :)

BPuhl

# re: Powershell's social responsibility@ Tuesday, September 15, 2009 9:04 AM

Because the commands just aren't long enough already...

joe

# re: Powershell's social responsibility@ Tuesday, September 15, 2009 9:25 AM

No, not at all. The default function of an executable is to execute, not to ask permission. Cmdlets, functions, scripts, are all there to perform work. If you want to use whatif, use it. Don't force contrary behavior on the rest of the world.

James Pogran

# re: Powershell's social responsibility@ Tuesday, September 15, 2009 2:59 PM

3. All shared PowerShell tools (scripts, functions, cmdlets, modules, and snap-ins should have help (with examples).

June Blender

# re: Powershell's social responsibility@ Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:53 PM

-OrElse in place of -Force?

Rob

# re: Powershell's social responsibility@ Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:08 AM

James - this is not serious - I just didn't think that a smiley is necessary ;)

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner

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