Winter Scripting Games: Profiles in Perfection
Nick Ford
As part of the 2007 Winter Scripting Games the Script Center is profiling competitors who recorded a perfect score in the 2007 Scripting Games. Here, in his own words, is a little something about Nick Ford, who received a perfect score in the VBScript Advanced Division.
Check out more Profiles in Perfection from the 2007 Scripting Games.
Nick Ford
I'm a Systems Administrator for a large financial organization in the UK, so most of my day-to-day work is based around Active Directory and server management. VBScript entered my working life a few years ago, when I was tasked with designing our Active Directory prior to a migration from an NT4 environment. I hate documentation, and thought that if I could script the bulk of the setup, suitably commented, I might get away without having to do too much. In the end, I had scripts for OU, Group and User creation and so forth, but I had to do reams of documentation, so I guess my cunning plan failed. It did turn me into something of a scripting evangelist in our team, however, and now I usually think of problems in terms of "how can I write a script to fix this?"
I've grappled with Windows PowerShell for a while now, and it's slowly starting to sink in. Reluctant as I was to leave VBScript, I'm starting to really enjoy it, and will be doing the PowerShell flavor of the Games this year. As part of my learning, I'm working through the 2007 Olympics puzzles, which is a good way of firming up some of the concepts I've learned.
Some general tips
| • | Organize your scripts. Keep the AD ones in a folder marked AD and so forth, you'd be surprised at how quickly that temp directory fills up with useful bits of code! |
| • | Comment your scripts. Just a brief line to say what they do and why, and if there's a bit of "unusual" code, make a note to say what it does - chances are it will save you time should you have to pick through it in a years' time. |
| • | Get scripting to work for you at home. It's not all about work and some scripts can be really useful in our "other" lives. For example, I use scripts to transcode and synchronize my music directory into a compatible format that works on my wife's iPod. I also use one that renames all my digital photos and so forth. |
