According to Don Jones, co-author of Microsoft Windows PowerShell: TFM , “VBScript is deader than a doornail. Buy my PowerShell book, Microsoft Windows PowerShell: TFM. Bwah hah hah hah!
Okay, just kidding. For real, VBScript has at least another ten years in it, if not more. For example, Windows “Longhorn” Server Core comes with a command-line utility that you use to add “roles,” like DHCP or DNS, to the server. The utility? Written in VBScript. Yup. Server Core can’t even run PowerShell, since it doesn’t run the .NET Framework.
So, VBScript has a life. Look, it’s the right tool for the right job: Sometimes, VBScript is the right tool. Sometimes KiXtart is. Sometimes, it’ll be batch files. Sometimes, it’s a big hammer, the off button on your pager, and a long weekend. Logon scripts, for example: VBScript is my choice (although there’s nothing wrong with KiXtart, if that’s how you get things done), in no small part because PowerShell just isn’t a logon script-friendly tool – it wasn’t meant to be.
So VBScript is here for a while. Revel in it! Connect to databases with it! Write HTAs with it (something you can’t do in any other language but JScript, by the way)! Long live VBScript… and PowerShell, and Batch, and anything else that gets you out of the office a bit quicker, right?”
February 15, 2007 at 1:20 pm |
VBScript is complete. You will continue to ship as a windows feature for a while, then it will become an optional component, then a web download and eventually a pay-for-support feature. This will take a while so there is no rush to get off of VBScript.
Windows PowerShell is the strategic technology for scripting and the focus of all our investments. That said, it is not an either/or world. You can very readily invoke your existing VBScripts from within PowerShell.
I would love to hear why you think that PowerShell is not a logon script-friendly tool.
Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows PowerShell/MMC Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx
February 15, 2007 at 1:43 pm |
My post was simply quoted from Don Jones’s response to a customer’s question about “Whether VBscript is dead?” You can find the comment at the following web page http://tinyurl.com/82425 where I think your question would be better answered.
Since I am new to VBscript and plan to further my skills in in this area, I am curious about it’s future and therefore decided to make this post for my own personal reference – my blog is simply a repository for any information I find interesting. This can be seeing by my posts, which are nothing I have unfortunately invented or created, but simply links to IT topics i find interesting & useful for my own personal use.