---
title: "The \"PowerShell\" Naming Stupidity"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/5/3/the-quotpowershellquot-naming-stupidity.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/5/3/the-quotpowershellquot-naming-stupidity.html"
published: "2006-05-03T20:41:00"
updated: "2006-05-03T20:41:00"
tags: []
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "\" PowerShell \" ?What a stupid name for a product known as \" Monad \"! Sounds like one of the things I'd download at TuCows for $15, doesn't it? Cross Posted from Blogs.Microsoft.Co.Il/Blogs/Royo"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# The "PowerShell" Naming Stupidity

By Roy Osherove May 3, 2006

**Historical article** · Originally published May 3, 2006; technical details may be outdated.

"[PowerShell](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4A2D5ECB-0740-4AD5-98D3-EB236C3F37D9&displaylang=en)" ?What a stupid name for a product known as "[Monad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSH_\(shell\))"! Sounds like one of the things I'd download at [TuCows](http://www.tucows.com/) for $15, doesn't it? Cross Posted from [Blogs.Microsoft.Co.Il/Blogs/Royo](http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/Royo)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/