But what can you do with it?  Well, you might remember that whole .NET Framework thing - basically Microsoft's modern windows API.  Turns out, you can do *literally* anything the framework can, with a little effort. That' fine and dandy, but what can you do easily and well?

Almost everything.  See, between .NET and WMI and few other things, Microsoft has abstracted out the entire operating system into objects we can work with, and written PS stuff that manages it.

So pretty much every Microsoft product can me talked to / managed from / poked with via Powershell. And so can most things on top of it by major vendors.  VMWare (which has Python options too of course) for example.

I wanted to hate PowerShell. I did at first, and then I didn't.  But, now I do again.  Want to know why?

I hate PowerShell, because it's not available for Linux, and I've realized part of why it can't be available for Linux.  PowerShell exposed me to how "unified" Windows is (or can be made to seem), and how heterogenous Linux is.