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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

If using Windows, then Powershell.

Nah, install cygwin and use bash so your skills are transferable. Linux skills last for years; Windows skills tend to last till the next version. And I say this coming from a Windows background.

Powershell gives you direct access to all .NET components and the ability to run C# [or any other CLR language] directly from the command line and in your scripts.

YMMV.

That's untrue. I haven't used Windows as my primary workstation in over two years (and it was an XP system then) and I can hop onto a Win7 box and interact using most of the same commands I internalized administrating Windows 3.11 boxes on LanMan networks in the mid-90s.

The real problem is that Windows skills generally are only transferrable to other versions of Windows whereas Unix command line tools - be they GNU or BSD - are. And even that's not entirely true. If there's a Windows command-line tool that you learn about and like I guarantee you it's based on a Unix command-line tool that has a man entry.

I'm not talking about just the operating system, I'm talking about the platform and the necessary services you'd need on a server. Configuring a windows server, setting up IIS, mail server, etc, are different from version to version. Linux is much more consistent, editing a few text files in /etc. Sure, you can jump into cmd and execute many of the commands that always worked on windows, but that's a very small set of commands compared to Linux.

I made the switch to Linux a few years ago for servers, only months ago for my primary workstation, and I'd never go back to Windows; though Windows with cygwin is close enough to Linux to make a very nice workstation.

>"I'd never go back to Windows"

That's not much of a reason to use Cygwin in lieu of Powershell.

Sure it is, it's how you make the transition to Linux easier.

With that I certainly do agree.

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