PowerShell Architect Retires After Decades At the Prompt (theregister.com)
(Friday January 23, 2026 @05:40PM (BeauHD)
from the raise-your-glass dept.)
- Reference: 0180645194
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/23/1915259/powershell-architect-retires-after-decades-at-the-prompt
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/powershell_snover_retires/
Jeffrey Snover, the driving force behind PowerShell, has [1]retired after a career that reshaped Windows administration . The Register reports:
> Snover's retirement comes after a brief sojourn at Google as a Distinguished Engineer, following a lengthy stint at Microsoft, during which he pulled the company back from imposing a graphical user interface (GUI) on administrators who really just wanted a command line from which to run their scripts. Snover joined Microsoft as the 20th century drew to a close. The company was all about its Windows operating system and user interface in those days -- great for end users, but not so good for administrators managing fleets of servers. Snover correctly predicted a shift to server datacenters, which would require automated management. A powerful shell... a PowerShell, if you will.
>
> [...] Over the years, Snover has dropped the occasional pearl of wisdom or shared memories from his time getting PowerShell off the ground. A recent favorite concerns the naming of Cmdlets and their original name in Monad: Function Units, or FUs. Snover [2]wrote : "This abbreviation reflected the Unix smart-ass culture I was embracing at the time. Plus I was developing this in a hostile environment, and my sense of diplomacy was not yet fully operational." Snover doubtless has many more war stories to share. In the meantime, however, we wish him well. Many admins owe Snover thanks for persuading Microsoft that its GUI obsession did not translate to the datacenter, and for lengthy careers in gluing enterprise systems together with some scripted automation.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/powershell_snover_retires/
[2] https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2025/12/11/the-cmdlet-decision-when-to-be-weird/
> Snover's retirement comes after a brief sojourn at Google as a Distinguished Engineer, following a lengthy stint at Microsoft, during which he pulled the company back from imposing a graphical user interface (GUI) on administrators who really just wanted a command line from which to run their scripts. Snover joined Microsoft as the 20th century drew to a close. The company was all about its Windows operating system and user interface in those days -- great for end users, but not so good for administrators managing fleets of servers. Snover correctly predicted a shift to server datacenters, which would require automated management. A powerful shell... a PowerShell, if you will.
>
> [...] Over the years, Snover has dropped the occasional pearl of wisdom or shared memories from his time getting PowerShell off the ground. A recent favorite concerns the naming of Cmdlets and their original name in Monad: Function Units, or FUs. Snover [2]wrote : "This abbreviation reflected the Unix smart-ass culture I was embracing at the time. Plus I was developing this in a hostile environment, and my sense of diplomacy was not yet fully operational." Snover doubtless has many more war stories to share. In the meantime, however, we wish him well. Many admins owe Snover thanks for persuading Microsoft that its GUI obsession did not translate to the datacenter, and for lengthy careers in gluing enterprise systems together with some scripted automation.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/powershell_snover_retires/
[2] https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2025/12/11/the-cmdlet-decision-when-to-be-weird/
I would expect (Score:2)
Microsoft to start trashing powershell at this point. Most of the time it's one person protecting the functionality of good tools, then it all goes away when they leave.