Introduction:

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches is a book for learning Windows PowerShell, written by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks. The book is published by Manning. the book is currently in its third edition. The first and second editions came out in 2011 and 2012 respectively, and the third edition came out in 2016.

I’m reviewing the third edition of this book.

My review:

After explaining the history of the book in the preface, the book explains its purpose in the first chapter. As in, the entire first chapter is dedicated to explaining why PowerShell is necessary, who is the audience of the book, etc. I personally don’t mind that. most people usually jump straight to the chapters, and generally ignore “Who’s this book for” sections, and then complain about how the book is not for them. But here, the authors clearly define their audience.

They even take pains to explain the keys of the keyboard which aren’t used very often, (For example “`”,) which is fine if the reader is not used to the command-line interface, or just typing in general. They even instruct in how to make sure that the PowerShell looks good to you when you begin to use it, so you can see the output clearly. Luckily, those instructions weren’t necessary for me (as I’m blind, I didn’t feel it necessary to tinker with the display options,) but I’m sure these instructions do come in handy for the other readers.

I’ll warn you though, the smooth sailing you might be enjoying for the first two chapters might come to a halt in the third chapter, where you need to update help. I tried to do that, and even with administrator’s privileges, the command didn’t work. You can check out this excellent Stack Overflow answer to why. this isn’t the fault of the book per see, as that answer explains, but it is still enough to put out some beginners.

Sadly, again, as that answer explained, things are probably are not going to improve anytime soon, as this problem has been lurking for a long while now.

Despite the trouble with help, (which is not the fault of this book,) I enjoyed learning how to use Power Shell from this book. Granted, it took me a little bit longer than a month, but I finished it all the same, and I enjoyed getting exposed to a technology which I have not used thus far.

So, let’s answer the question. Is the book worth reading?

I think yes. Not only it describes the Power Shell well, but the most important thing is that it includes exercises. Meaning, you just don’t get to see and type out the examples in the book. You get to actually solve some problems with the knowledge you’ve recently acquired. This is why I heavily favor the books which have exercises.

Though you will eventually move on to an advance reference later, this book also works as a great reference for beginners, because the information is not so dense, and you can find solutions to the tasks which you are likely going to encounter.

So, this book comes heavily recommended from me. have you read this book? What are your own thoughts on it? tell me in the comments below. I also reviewed A Series of Unfortunate Events on my other blog. If you like my writing, then please support me by buying me a coffee.