Please don't deprecate VBScript

Hello,

I am new to the forum. I came here for one specific reason. I found out that Microsoft is deprecating VBScript and I have some points to make regarding this decision and I think they are pretty compelling.

Firstly, I am a software engineer today and I have VBScript to thank for that. If it wasn't for VBScript, I would not have gotten interested in programming. It provides an easy way for new programmers to experiment with notepad or another simple text editor to create almost anything (as long as it's simple enough). See, a lot of people don't realize that VBScript is far more than just a scripting engine for utilitarian usage. When coupled with HTA files, it becomes something that can even make true games and apps. A lot of IT professionals don't know this, but you can create pretty advanced GUIs with it using HTA. You can think of it kind of like a web canvas that works in IE. It's a lot like electron is today. With electron, you build desktop apps using JS; that's exactly what HTA is coupled with VBScript. It's much more powerful than a lot of people give it credit for.

1. You can make nice apps and games without downloading any kind of IDE.
2. It provides a simple learning environment that teaches about programming (or allows for true app development using HTA).
3. It's useful in a corporate sense for making custom interfaces for kiosks or otherwise.
4. You can make installers or configuration interfaces. (Sort of like your own control panel applets.)
5. Useful for IT professionals that want to have custom configuration software for their specific needs, but don't know how to program in much more advanced languages.
6. A ton of old batch files rely on it in order to function. Once it's removed, these batch files will no longer work and there would be no easy way to get them working again. Honestly, I believe batch files are ugly, but so many people (especially IT professionals) need them. If we're going to leave batch files in place, then we should also leave VBScript alone. Honestly, I think batch files should be the first thing to go in the future - totally not VBScript. Cause batch files are a big problem and almost everything they do can be done in PowerShell. The problem is that isn't true for VBScript. VBScript needs to exist because it can do things that both batch files AND PowerShell can't.
7. It's tiny in size. I don't see how removing it really gains any space at all. If it is an issue, then please just remove the wscript.exe and cscript.exe components, but leave vbscript.dll and mshta.exe.
8. Maybe it's not about size, but rather encouraging the use of PowerShell instead because of increased security. I understand that. In that case, removing wscript.exe and cscript.exe, but not mshta.exe or vbscript.dll ensures that people won't be able to use VBScript for utilitarian purposes anymore (because that's what that thing is for - running scripts that perform system functions on windows). Whereas mshta.exe is just a GUI type framework for VBScript with limited system functions (because it's running in a web browser after all).
9. It's secure, cause unlike wscript, it runs in a headless browser window. Of course, maybe not perfectly secure, but good enough for what it does.
10. It's extensible - using COM. I was actually able to make my own GUI engine for it using VB6. I called it wshshell.exe. You could include that in your script and then build GUIs without using the mshta.exe. This provided actual native windows GUIs without any sort of browser component.

Anyway, that's my point. There are so many worse things in windows that could be removed, but removing VBScript makes no sense and is very problematic for a lot of IT people.

If VBScript needs to go and Microsoft decides to do it anyway, then I'd like to pose this:

Note to MS - We need a programming/scripting language that's built into windows. It should have an entry in the start menu. It should be tailored towards beginners or IT professionals. It should have powerful access to the Windows API and the ability to create GUIs easily in code (without the need for any fancy IDE). Maybe it could have a scintilla based coding environment, but nothing too big. It needs to be kept small if it's going to ship with every copy of Windows. You want it to be a very simple language; even easier to learn than Python. I think using something like lua would be ideal. It's very very small (less than 1MB) and is certainly powerful enough. You would need to include libraries to interface with the Windows API cause lua currently doesn't have enough of that, but it would still be very small. A scintilla based coding environment is also very small. I checked and scintilla's DLL is only 1.7 MB. Especially if you make the included programming language such that it's very Windows centric. This would be a very clever way to capture new programmers into the Windows ecosystem. See, the problem for Microsoft is that most programmers have moved over to open source operating systems and languages like Python. This is a major problem for Microsoft. If you want to get new programmers interested in coding on the Windows platform, then something like this HAS to be done. I honestly wish I wash in charge of Microsoft because I know I could fix your trajectory. If VBScript has to be done away with, then this idea is necessary.

This is not written by any AI. It's all 100% handwritten by me. You can see this matters a lot to me.