When I first encountered Powershell, I was already retired. I decided to learn it because it looked like a good replacement for the DOS shell. I stuck around because it gave me a better handle on automation, and because it could help me keep my mind sharp.
Am I the only retiree that is working on powershell? If you are too, then please reply here.
I had a handful of startup exercises that could help me gain proficiency. The advantage of these projects is that I had already coded in them in some other language, in some other environmet. Here are three of them.
Simple Linear Regreession. In my first FORTRAN course, one of the programming assignments was to write a simple linear regression program. I still had the notes that told the programmer how to code the leaast square method (in general terms). This isn’t hard. It teaches you loops, reading data files, and basic arithmetic. It’s also not very useful. Any good spreadsheet has a tool for regression built in.
Cryptograms. Back in the day, newspapers carried a feature on the puzzle page that invited you to solve a sample cryptogram. This was written in a basic substitution cipher. This exercise allows you to encrypt any short block of text that you want. It’s a little work, mostly in coming up with a derangement of the alphabet.
Simple Template Engine. Just the bssic function, which is combining a table of actual data with sa template to produce a series of expansions. Each row of the table creates one expansion, and each column resolves one of the variables in the template. Not easy, but surpriseingly useful. I use CSV as the data input format. I use Import-Csv, Set-Variable, and ExpandString to do all the heavy lifting. Then I just codde three loops and I’m done.
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Sure . . . I’ll fess up to retiring in 2014. I’ve used PowerShell even before it was called PowerShell! Its early name was “Monad”. Prior to PowerShell I used Perl with ADSI and, if forced to, I even used Visual Basic.
If you’d like a few more PowerShell exercises have a look at www.exercism.org. There are 138 of them. Some are really basic “intro” level, but they progress up to (at least one) using dynamic programming.
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I retired 20 year already and I am learning Powershell. I was EE and manager of EE for 30years concentrated on RF and system. I wasn’t that good with computers back in the days. I like to keep learning to keep my mind active just like I put 5hrs/wk on weight training and aerobics to keep my body in shape.
Since I retired, I was still designing extreme high end audiophile power amps, but I was hitting the ceiling few years back and no point of keep pushing. My wife is not good with computers, everytime I hear “bang” and “$hit” from upstairs, I hurry up to go try fixing printers and computers before she throw it out the window!!! So slowly I started to learn more and more.
Now I want to learn IT, cyber security and all that. Powershell seems to be one important thing to learn. I spent a few weeks studying Networking and cyber security. I just bought a book on Windows 11 to try to dig deep into windows. I am still exploring what I need to learn for IT and cyber security. I want to at least write a little program on this just for the fun of it.
I coded up a script to convert my bank’s new presentation format back to what the bank used to provide. I think the old format was something like YAML. The prototype solution I came up with wasn’t a generalized converter. Just enough for my own purposes. Fortunately I was able to generate a template from stuff the bank provided together with a little magic. This made use of my DIY template engine.
I’m not retired yet, but hope to retire next spring. I’ve been in IT and programming my whole career - in the last 5 years started using PowerShell and really like it. Good to hear people mentioning FORTRAN and other “older” languages. My favorite language so far is Perl, but I haven’t used that in years. My experience with PowerShell isn’t very extensive - reading files, connecting to and querying databases, regular expressions, etc. I’m happy to help here any way I can.
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