Skip to main content

Help yourself if you ask for help

This is a slight modification of a Reddit post I created a few months ago. It was written for Reddit, however the analogy works even if you ask for help anywhere else too.

I have not been on Reddit for long, however I have been watching the posts being submitted. In all fairness, I have a couple of suggestions to you if you need help with something larger than a commandline or suggestion of a command line:

 How to ask for help

  1. Always state the goal of the solution. What is the problem you have decided to try and solve. If your solution is to produce output, explain what it should output and what form (console, xml, json, text, csv etc).
  2. How will the solution be executed (as a script, as part of an module or as an function)
  3. If your solution is not working, share the whole script/function included dependency code, not just the line/command/function that is not working.
  4. If you code requires parameters and your code does not include any help/comments on how it works, explain what the parameters are and how you want them to work. Also important to include a section(just a few lines) of required input files like csv/cms/json or if the script is designed to receive input from an operator at the console.
  5. What version of powershell are you targeting and if it is executed on a client/server.
  6. Include error messages you are receiving when executing the code


Also if you manage to:
  1. Write and format your code (all codelines should start with 4 spaces (blanks)) to be rendered nicely)
  2. Avoid using aliases (use full cmdlet names)
  3. Use logical variable names (too long is better than too short, however that is a personal perference). This also applies to parameter names.


You will probably receive a reply to your request more quickly and to the point.
Examples of bad requests:
The googler:

 "*Hey, have this powershell/script I found on the internet. It is failing on this line <insert line her> with this error..... Please help...*"
The csv lover:

"*Hey, I have this huge script that requires input from 2 csv files. It works when I input the values manually, but not when I pipe in the csv files with the import-csv cmdlet.....*"
Free ride lover:

"*Hey, I have this huge problem and I am thinking of learning powershell. I need to <insert required solution here>.... Please show me a script that can do this...*"
Ask and you shall receive, if you ask the right way

 You will need to put some work in to your request, however in the long run you will most likely receive a reply sooner rather than later and it will provide you with a suggestion that is closer to the answer you where looking for. This is just my prediction, it is not an universal truth.

Consider this my 2cc. I love to help when I have a clear understanding of the issue and we can discuss options related to your requests.

 Cheers

 Tore
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Serialize data with PowerShell

Currently I am working on a big new module. In this module, I need to persist data to disk and reprocess them at some point even if the module/PowerShell session was closed. I needed to serialize objects and save them to disk. It needed to be very efficient to be able to support a high volume of objects. Hence I decided to turn this serializer into a module called HashData. Other Serializing methods In PowerShell we have several possibilities to serialize objects. There are two cmdlets you can use which are built in: Export-CliXml ConvertTo-JSON Both are excellent options if you do not care about the size of the file. In my case I needed something lean and mean in terms of the size on disk for the serialized object. Lets do some tests to compare the different types: (Hashdata.Object.ps1) You might be curious why I do not use the Export-CliXML cmdlet and just use the [System.Management.Automation.PSSerializer]::Serialize static method. The static method will generate t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Toying with audio in powershell

Controlling mute/unmute and the volume on you computer with powershell. Add-Type -TypeDefinition @' using System.Runtime.InteropServices; [Guid("5CDF2C82-841E-4546-9722-0CF74078229A"), InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] interface IAudioEndpointVolume { // f(), g(), ... are unused COM method slots. Define these if you care int f(); int g(); int h(); int i(); int SetMasterVolumeLevelScalar(float fLevel, System.Guid pguidEventContext); int j(); int GetMasterVolumeLevelScalar(out float pfLevel); int k(); int l(); int m(); int n(); int SetMute([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] bool bMute, System.Guid pguidEventContext); int GetMute(out bool pbMute); } [Guid("D666063F-1587-4E43-81F1-B948E807363F"), InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] interface IMMDevice { int Activate(ref System.Guid id, int clsCtx, int activationParams, out IAudioEndpointVolume aev); } [Guid("A95664D2-9614-4F35-A746-DE8DB63617E6"), Inte...
3 comments
Read more

Creating Menus in Powershell

I have created another Powershell module. This time it is about Console Menus you can use to ease the usage for members of your oranization. It is available on GitHub and published to the PowershellGallery . It is called cliMenu. Puppies This is a Controller module. It uses Write-Host to create a Menu in the console. Some of you may recall that using Write-Host is bad practice. Controller scripts and modules are the exception to this rule. In addition with WMF5 Write-Host writes to the Information stream in Powershell, so it really does not matter anymore. Design goal I have seen to many crappy menus that is a mixture of controller script and business logic. It is in essence a wild west out there, hence my ultimate goal is to create something that makes it as easy as possible to create a menu and change the way it looks. Make it easy to build Menus and change them Make it as "declarative" as possible Menus The module supports multiple Men...
Post a Comment
Read more