[vertex-four]

dig's never been distributed with any Linux OS I've used. (Resolve-DnsName is in Powershell 4.0, which implements most of that functionality.) Nor has lftp. So we'll take those out of the running.

The vast majority of what wget and curl are used for is simply downloading single files/pages. Invoke-WebRequest does that fine. It also deals with poking at most web services you're likely to come across. What service can't you use with it?

As for telnet... the removal of that was ridiculous, I'll admit.

[Elrac]

Not the same user, but I once tried to get PowerShell to do an ls over FTP for me, and even with copying some sample code it was horribly painful.

I can't speak from broad experience but my impression was that PowerShell does a bunch of common cases fairly well but if you want something a bit different you're bashing your head on your desk.

[oblio]

> you're bashing your head on your desk

Repeatedly.

Powershell is a wonderful concept but the ecosystem around it, except for Microsoft's own extensions, hasn't really hit puberty.

Also try writing scripts which involve native Windows commands (such as robocopy & company). Things are definitely not intuitive and the error handling is crappy. You either stay within Powershell bounds and everything is wonderful, or you step out and are in a world of pain.

[mreiland]

years ago I posted much the same sentiment on stack overflow when I was attempting to use Powershell 1 to build and deploy software that used SVN for it's SCM.

It was a pain in the neck and I felt like the PS integration was awesome as long as you stayed in that ecosystem, but the second you strayed... pain.

I got bashed fairly hard with the question I asked surrounding it closed as unconstructive (it was an honest question about exactly what PS was targetted towards).