Microsoft has announced it’s removing VBScript from future Windows releases.
VBScript is being deprecated. In future releases of Windows, VBScript will be available as a feature on demand before its removal from the operating system.
VBScript has been part of Windows for almost 30 years, first shipping in 1996. VBScript has a long history of serving as a vector for malware, which probably explains its removal from Windows.
Thom Holwerda,
I’ve long disliked vbscript as a language, it’s just clunky. As for security, I really don’t find VBscript to be any more dangerous than other executables and scripting languages that windows continues to support. They can all be used maliciously, yet we don’t see microsoft removing alternatives like powershell, etc. The reason for deprecating vbscript is likely that it just hasn’t aged very well while better alternatives have taken over all the roles that vbscript used to be used for. It will still be useful for backwards compatibility, but I doubt many developers still prefer it for new work.
Makes sense to remove old technologies that are seldom used and easily abused.
I last used VBScript not so long ago, for a quick’n dirty login script based inventory tool.
VBScript/WSH had its use as a faster alternative to the dog slow resource hog Powershell is.
Now time and Gordon Moore made performance less of an issue, and we all know we’re going to burn this planet anyway.
VBScript was never really a developer tool, and not intended as such, but rather a sysadmin tool.
I guess many companies will still be running VBS login scripts or scheduled tasks for many years.
VBS failed to replace batch files (!), and failed to really fill the gap before Powershell was actually usable.
Had Microsoft bundled it with some kind of shell or REPL tool, VBScript/WSH would have been much more successful.
Instead of this, it will just be remembered as a Windows vulnerability.
Also, I wonder whether they really meant Windows Script Host instead of VBScript, and they’re doing away with the whole thing, or they’re retaining the ability to run JScript files with WSH, which does not seem like the right thing to do security-wise.
Nico57,
I don’t see why anyone should think that vbscript is more easily abused than any other scripting language. They’re all running with the same OS permissions.
Haha. In for a penny, in for a pound!
Well, I don’t care for vbscript much either, but IMHO it was a large step up from batch files, which are kind of awful except for the most basic tasks.
Vbscript was always very useful in excel macros. Apparently microsoft recently added python, which I think is great except that microsoft chose to use the feature to rope users into their data centers rather than allowing users to simply run python normally…ugh.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification
But every other scripting language can do all the same things. Unless you are claiming that windows shouldn’t have any scripting languages, I don’t see the basis by which you are claiming that vbscript is worse. How so?
I believe Excel technically used VB for applications. There may have been some differences, though I don’t really recall the specifics off the top of my head.