Announcing "Pester for Beginners" — the whole 25-part series, all at once

📦 All the runnable code for this series is in the companion code pack — one folder per section, every example verified on Pester 5.

I'm genuinely excited to finally share something I've been working on offline for a while: a full blog series on testing PowerShell with Pester.

If you've ever gone looking for a tutorial series online, you know the feeling I'm trying to avoid. You find a promising "Part 1," it's good, you get invested — and then the trail goes cold at Part 3. The series was never finished. I've hit that wall more times than I can count, and I didn't want to do that to anyone.

So I made a decision early on: I wasn't going to publish this piece by piece and hope I kept up. I'd finish the entire series first, then release it all at once. I wrote these across the spring — each post is dated when I wrote it, starting back in early March — and today the whole set goes out together. Nothing is half-done. You can start at Part 1 right now and read straight through to the end without waiting on me.

What the series covers

It's called Pester for Beginners, and it's exactly that — a path from "I've never written a test" to "I write, mock, measure, and automate Pester tests with confidence." It's 25 parts, grouped into six sections, and the numbered order is the recommended reading order. Each post builds on the ones before it.

All examples use Pester 5.x (the current major line), and every code block is meant to be copy-paste runnable. It's vendor-neutral — no product pitch, just Pester.

Here are the six sections:

1. Foundations: Why & First Steps — what Pester is, getting it installed (and untangling the old v3/v4 vs v5 confusion), and writing and running your first passing test.
2. Assertions: Making Tests Mean Something — the Should command, comparing values and collections, testing for failures with Should -Throw, and negating cleanly.
3. Structure: Organizing a Test Suite — Describe vs Context vs It, setup and teardown, Arrange–Act–Assert, and file/naming conventions.
4. Testing Real Code — getting your own functions under test, safe file/registry tests with TestDrive and TestRegistry, data-driven tests, and filtering which tests run.
5. Mocking & Isolation — what mocking actually is, the Mock basics, proving interactions with Should -Invoke, targeted mocks, and the pitfalls that catch people.
6. Quality & Automation — measuring code coverage, configuring runs with New-PesterConfiguration, running Pester in CI/CD, and a capstone that ties it all into a TDD habit.

Each post follows the same shape — a hook, what you'll learn, runnable examples, a "try it yourself" exercise, common mistakes, and a recap — so it reads as one continuous voice whether you go front-to-back or treat it as a reference.

How to use it

If you're brand new to testing in PowerShell, start at Part 1 and work through in order. If you already know the basics and you're here for a specific topic — mocking, coverage, CI — jump straight to that section; the posts cross-link by part number so you won't get lost.

My Silent Partner

Let me put this out there plainly: I use AI — Claude — when I write.

The work, the ideas, the angle, the stories, the opinions — that's all mine. I decide what's worth saying and what gets tossed.

AI handles the boring parts: organizing scattered thoughts, tightening sentences, pointing out weak spots, and helping with some of the formatting and publishing overhead. It doesn't think for me, and it doesn't tell me what to say.

AI isn't my ghostwriter. It's more like a sharp coworker who doesn't get tired and doesn't take things personally. I bring the perspective; it helps me sharpen it.

I use it because I want the final product to be clear, useful, and worth someone's time — especially people who build, troubleshoot, and create the way I do.

Why I'm Telling You This

I'd rather be upfront. Trust matters, and I don't want anyone guessing how the sausage gets made.

AI is a tool — a powerful one, sure — but still just a tool. It doesn't replace experience or judgment. It just helps me refine what I already believe is worth putting into the world.

So what you're getting here is simple: my ideas, my voice, my responsibility — sharpened with a little machine help.

Lastly, AI is here to stay, and I'm doing everything I can to find my place in this new world. What's disappearing are the old limits — the things that used to make certain projects feel impossible. Let's be real: a 25-part blog series would've been impossible on my own. AI didn't do the work for me — it just tore down the walls that used to stop me.

And honestly? I feel more creative and more free than I ever have before. I hope you enjoy the work that comes out of that.

I'd love to hear from you

I hope you enjoy the series, and more than that, I hope it's genuinely helpful in your day-to-day work. That's the whole point of writing it.

Please feel free to send along any questions, comments, or concerns — at any time. I'm really looking forward to hearing how the series works for you, and whether it helps. If something is unclear, or you'd test a thing differently than I did, I want to know.

Thank you so much for reading, and take care.