Hey now, Windows Script Host (WSH) supported VBA and JScript scripts. WSH was installed by default on systems up through Windows 7, I believe. Scripts run though WSH had access to a wide array of APIs -- a lot was possible. The WSH executable (wscript.exe) was also configured to be the default handler for .js files in Windows Explorer.
Also, HTA apps were an option. Write an HTML file, include a <script> tag with either JS or VBA, and you have access to APIs equivalent to a local HTML file opened on IE5, plus some. This was a popular option at one point for powering CD-ROM autorun menus, among other things.
(The company I worked for used embedded HTA in a massive C++ COM app to render some forms where the fields and values had to be dynamic based on data only known at run time. Debugging was horrible until I learned you could inject Firebug Lite into the HTA apps and at least be able to console.log(). It was truly a dark, dusty corner of Windows programming -- of which there were many.)
Yeah, WSH and VBA was available since Win98, though the documentation was scarce and not part of Windows itself (compare with QBASIC someone else mentioned where not only it came with documentation but the first thing it tells you when you run it is how to open the documentation).
I did use it for an "Introduction to programming" magazine article back in mid-2000s though, main reason because it was already there and all you had to do was open Notepad and start typing (...and make sure you save with a .vbs and not a .vbs.txt extension...). I even got an email a few years later by someone telling me they got into programming because of it :-P.
Hey now, Windows Script Host (WSH) supported VBA and JScript scripts. WSH was installed by default on systems up through Windows 7, I believe. Scripts run though WSH had access to a wide array of APIs -- a lot was possible. The WSH executable (wscript.exe) was also configured to be the default handler for .js files in Windows Explorer.
Also, HTA apps were an option. Write an HTML file, include a <script> tag with either JS or VBA, and you have access to APIs equivalent to a local HTML file opened on IE5, plus some. This was a popular option at one point for powering CD-ROM autorun menus, among other things.
(The company I worked for used embedded HTA in a massive C++ COM app to render some forms where the fields and values had to be dynamic based on data only known at run time. Debugging was horrible until I learned you could inject Firebug Lite into the HTA apps and at least be able to console.log(). It was truly a dark, dusty corner of Windows programming -- of which there were many.)