The Object Shell, 2006

PowerShell broke with tradition: its pipeline carries objects, not text. This era starts from the DOS commands you already know, shows what each one became, then puts the object pipeline to work.

Classic shells track · 8 missions · boss mission, no written exam · free, no signup. Everything below runs in the browser terminal on the SERVBG home page.

Open The Object Shell in the terminal

What you will do

  1. list items — like dir, but each result is an object Get-ChildItem

    PowerShell 1.0, 2006 (codename "Monad"). dir still works — it is an ALIAS for Get-ChildItem.

  2. list running processes as rich objects Get-Process

    Every result is a live .NET object, not a line of text. That is the whole revolution.

  3. reveal what an object can DO (its properties + methods) Get-Process | Get-Member

    Get-Member is the key to PowerShell: it shows the properties and methods hiding inside every object.

  4. filter objects in a pipeline Get-Process | Where-Object CPU -gt 100

    The pipe passes OBJECTS, not text. You filter on real, typed properties — no fragile string parsing.

  5. sort objects by any property Get-Process | Sort-Object CPU -Descending

    Sort by any property, because the property is real typed data — not "column 3" of some text blob.

  6. shape output — pick the properties you want Get-Process | Select-Object Name,CPU

    Where + Sort + Select and you have a query language for your own machine. Verb-Noun, composable.

  7. read help for any cmdlet Get-Help Get-ChildItem

    Verb-Noun naming (Get-, Set-, New-, Remove-) makes 200+ cmdlets guessable. Get-Help explains any of them.

  8. Boss missionshow the PowerShell version $PSVersionTable

    2016: PowerShell went open-source + cross-platform (PS 6 "Core"). The object shell, everywhere.

Certificate

This is one of the original eras, so it ends at the boss mission: there is no written exam and no certificate for it. Clearing the boss marks the era complete and banks the XP. The expansion tracks (networking, Cisco IOS, FortiOS, containers, Kubernetes, cloud, operations, defence, models and the nine graphics eras) are the ones that carry exams.

Nearby eras

Previous
1991 · The Open Machine
Live in a Unix shell: ls, grep, sed, awk, pipes, ssh, systemd. The 1969 model that still secures the internet today.
Next
1974 · Relational Queries
Ask a real database questions (SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, COUNT, GROUP BY, JOIN) against seeded tables that answer for real.

All 25 eras in the Terminal Academy

Open The Object Shell in the terminal