• 0 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 10th, 2023

help-circle

  • 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.





  • I’m not sure that it’s simply that a city attracts left leaning people.

    I grew up conservative, religious, and from the country, and had to move to the city because that’s where my mom took us. My move to the left ocurred due to what the city offered: cultures. I was exposed to many other ways of thinking, to art, to music, to trends, to drugs. I came to see other types of people as just people like me, with different points of view but each deserving their own chance at the American dream. I also became atheist.

    The city might attract the left, but it also creates the left.

    Incidentally, I want to move to a more secluded part of the state, probably where you’d see the F**k Biden billboards. We can’t all be pigeon holed so easily.