02.Meet PowerShell
Useful terms
We should define a few terms that we will use quite a bit in this chapter.
PowerShell — Refers to the 7.x version that you have installed.
Shell — A shell is basically an application that can accept text-based commands and is commonly used to interact with your computer or other machines via a script or interactive experience like a terminal. Examples of shells include Bash, fish, or PowerShell.
Terminal — A terminal is an application that can run a shell application within it so that a user can interact with the shell in a visual way. Terminals are shell agnostic, so you can run any shell in any terminal you’d like.
Windows PowerShell — Refers to PowerShell 5.1 that comes preinstalled on your Windows 10 device.
PowerShell Integrated Console vs. a normal terminal?
As we touched on before, the PowerShell Integrated Console is the heart of the Power Shell extension. Where do you think the commands in the Command Explorer came from? Yep, that’s right — the Integrated Console. There is a plethora of features to explore in the extension that depend on the Integrated Console, but just know that there’s only one of them. Any other terminal that is spawned, even if it’s running Power Shell, is not “integrated.” Remember: Don’t delete the Integrated Console.
The Visual Studio Code experience with PowerShell is heavily catered toward writing PowerShell scripts and modules, while the PowerShell in a Terminal application is an experience more for running through a few quick commands or long-running tasks.