Foreword to the First Edition
When Lee asked me to write the foreword to his new book I was pleasantly surprised. I was under the impression that forewords were written by people who were respected and accomplished in their chosen field. Apparently, that isn’t the case at all. My closest brush with accomplishment and respect came at a New Year’s celebration long ago and involved hairspray and a butane lighter. I guess it doesn’t matter too much—I mean, who reads the foreword to a scripting book anyway, right?
Lee wanted one of the Microsoft Scripting Guys to write the foreword. He wrote this book for the same hard-working admin scripters who frequent the TechNet Script Center. Lee thought it would make sense to have an original member of that team provide some perspective on where Windows admin scripting has been and where, with Windows PowerShell, it is going.
A lot has happened since Lee and I first spoke about this. I’ve left the Microsoft Scripting Guys team to work on the WMI SDK, and the Scripting Guys name has become a bit of a joke, given that the current driving force behind the team is a slight, half-sandwich-eating lady named Jean Ross. For now, Jean is keeping Greg around to do menial labor like packing up and shipping Dr. Scripto bobblehead dolls, but we’ll just see what happens when he finally runs out of topics for his Hey, Scripting Guy column. The future of scripting could very well be The Scripting Girl.