An open letter to the PowerShell 6 team

Dear Microsoft PowerShell developers:

First, thanks. I use your product every day. It makes my life better in a thousand ways. Daily, I discover some nuance of the language that makes it even more useful to me.

Recently, at a PowerShell user group meeting in Boston, @jsnover said in response to a question from a user that Microsoft would release PowerShell 6 when the community determines it should.

It’s time. Not that anyone is counting, but the first GitHub release is dated February, 2016 — about 18 months ago. The first beta is dated in early May, 2017. I’ve been using PowerShell 6 on AWS projects for over a year.

Why now? It’s simple: hard as I try, I cannot convince clients that they should use something in public beta in production. Just by calling it “release 1” you guys can solve my problem. Another reason: while I know you want to “get it right” for the Linux/macOS worlds, I think you’re there now. Kernel-heads I show PowerShell 6 to are either blasé (“I’m sticking with bash”) or won’t use it on anything significant as long as it’s in beta.

I know there’s lots to be done — and there are major issues you probably want to fix. But if what Jeffrey said is true — that the community declares it done — this member says, “Make it so.”

Thanks.

Best,
Alex