Python3 for PowerShell Users

By Josh Corrick

Elevator Pitch

Python has been rising in popularity year after year according to StackOverflow’s developer survey. Being able to understand it and fix it is a necessary skill in heterogeneous environments. This is a crash course in Python3 for windows admins already familiar with PowerShell.

Description

Python3 is an object-oriented programming language used for a wide variety of things from traditional programming to Scripting. This tool is used by Linux and Mac users to automate their systems as well as run popular applications. While Python3 and PowerShell are both object-oriented in nature, both have different rules for creating loops, defining variables, discovering methods and properties, importing modules, handling errors, and syntax. By the end of this talk you should have a better idea of how Python and PowerShell differ and their own respective strengths.

This talk with walk through:
* Overview of Python 2 and 3 (and why we focus on version 3)
* Setting up your working environment
* Installing Python3 and Pip3 and common issues
* Objects in Python3
* Built-in Functions
* Using modules
* Constructs for writing Functions or Scripts

Notes

This session is being developed in response to Don Jones challenge last year to learn another Scripting language. I am by no means a Python expert, but am learning this topic and thought it would be a good topic for Summit. This talk will focus on Python3 as python2 will not be supported by the time PowerShell summit comes around. It will more or less be an apples to oranges comparison of the two systems (if you do X in PowerShell you would do Y in Python).