When JavaScript was first released, it was a god-send. The alternative was vbscript and if you think JavaScript is bad…

Very true. I remember vbscript. I still have to write some occasionally. What’s funny is that powershell gets all the attention & security applied to it - but vbscript likely keeps its flaws in the name of backwards compatibility. I’m betting vbscript is a huge attack vector just waiting for some major exploitation that leads to its removal or being severely gimped.

Kit Sorens
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62Y

I assume vbscript is not Visual Basic? That was my first thought and I find that quite easy to grasp

Correct.

To get a feel for what VBScript was like, think of Visual Basic. Now throw out all the good bits and mix in a bunch of JavaScript style quirks.

Then try to parse binary data packets with it, beacuse XML isn’t widely supported and JSON has not been invented/discovered yet.

It was bad.

Correct. You know how JavaScript is not Java? Same thing. If memory serves me correctly there was a bit of a race to be the next Windows script language between NT4 and 2000 (to replace batch), and it was between VBScript and Kixtart (the former won out).

Yeah, everyone hates JS but that doesn’t mean the existence of JS is a curse. For a long time it has been the best at what it’s commonly used for. Otherwise no one would complain about it because no one would use it.

All I remember about vbscript was that array indexes started at 1.

I just remembered option base 0 :-)

andrew
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5
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2Y

option base 42

Sadly, per the syntax docs on O’Reilly it doesn’t look like it can be anything but 0 or 1. That’s not to say it’s a good feature, but at least make it fun if it’s gonna be bad.

Wow, they found something even more confusing than 1-indexing (conditional 1-indexing)

That’s such a perfect summary of VBScript. Starting array indexes at 1 was it’s vibe.

VBScript would show up for it’s first day as a construction worker in a white shirt and a tie. I loved VBScripts willingness to do messy work, but boy was it unprepared in many contexts.

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