PowerShellIDE
Submitted by todd on Thu, 2007-04-12 22:24
My second favorite new-ish Microsoft free tool is PowerShell (my first favorite is a tie between Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Virtual PC 2007). If PowerShell has caught your interest too, you might be interested in this free IDE (Integrated Developer Environment for it)...
It is described as: a graphical user interface that helps explore and exploit the vast power available with PowerShell. It contains a debugger, lets you step through PowerShell scripts, explore variables as you run your scripts and also supports many Intellisense-like functions.
Why use a GUI interface for
Why use a GUI interface for a command line shell? The whole point of shells (for me at least) is to get away from the limitations and non-trivial system overhead of running a GUI. Be free! Be free! If you want a shell, then run a shell in all of its beautiful limitless freedom. Don't be encumbered again with chains of GUI-ness. BTW, if you want a really great shell for pre-Vista windows and are used to UNIX, check out Cygwin! I've been using it for a while now to administer my SQL Server instances using UNIX tools such as cron jobs.
PowerShell is a lot more
PowerShell is a lot more than "just a shell" in the same sense that the Bourne Shell, C Shell, and BASH are a lot more than just command lines in a terminal window. All these shells include a rich programming/scripting language. PowerShell goes beyond the first generation shell scripting languages and has more in common with current generation dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby. Just as those languages have generated favored IDEs, so too has PowerShell. Once you get beyond the simple single line commands, you really need an edit/test cycle environment to edit and test more complex code.