I have tried to do the same, but i have opposite experience. I just can't grok the syntax, it always seems like a magician pulling out another "Haha! I bet you haven't seen this one coming !"
Like, i can't even construct the abstract model of how it's supposed to work
I mean you don't need to use the convenience aliases, or use even use it exactly that way. Here's it without any aliases:
Get-ChildItem -Recurse | ForEach-Object { $PSItem.Name.ToLower() }
This might be a better mix of both worlds:
gci -r | foreach { $PSItem.Name.ToLower() }
I'm even a windows .NET developer and I also find Powershell extremely weird. I'm not sure what it is.
Would you be able to provide an example? I'm not doubting your experience, just incredibly curious since I had the opposite experience.