PowerShell architect retires after decades at the prompt

A really important window is closing. Jeffrey Snover, chief PowerShell boffin and hero of Windows administrators around the world, has retired.

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.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

In 2002, Snover produced the Monad Manifesto [PDF], a platform for administrative ...