Can I? Should I?–examples–legacy scripts

In this post http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2011/07/17/can-i-should-i.aspx I stated that PowerShell isn’t necessarily the right answer to every problem.

I was left a comment asking if I could expand.  I’ll do that over a series of short posts as I think of examples.

One of the first that comes to mind is legacy scripts.

VBScript never really caught on as a mainstream administration tool. There were a number of reasons for this:

• non interactive
• harder to use and debug
• less information
• less flexible
• admins addicted to the GUI
• less pressure on people i.e. more admins

However, a number of organisations created a significant number of scripts and performed some very clever stuff.

Now, the question for those organisations is this -

“PowerShell has appeared. Do I convert all those scripts, that work really well to PowerShell?”

My answer would be no!  Learn PowerShell first . Get really proficient. Develop new stuff in PowerShell and migrate the legacy scripts when they need an over haul (or you get some free time) that way you get the best of both worlds and run the smallest risk when you come to migrate the legacy scripts.