One of the cool things (or bad things depending on how you look at it) about my job is that I get to work with many different tools at different application layers. I get to do DevOps kinds of work, data warehousing, transactional databases, Object/Relational Mapping, REST Services, WCF Services, Java Script, MVC Applications on both the server or on the browser. I get to do something in pretty much every tier of application development or maintenance. Even still, I am blown away at how much I don’t know; especially things that have been available for more than a year or two.
Today I was working in writing an application using VbScript. I had pretty much thought VbScript to be completely deprecated as a COM based application language, and haven’t written anything in it for nearly two decades. However, I am helping with an application, yes it is a modern application, that provides extension hooks through the use of VbScript.
Up front, I’m missing the tools and knowledge of libraries I’ve been using more recently for Java, JavaScript or Dot Net. When I was using VbScript we were doing things like ADO, or writing files, even building HTML for web sites. Today I need to use VbScript to talk with a REST web service, so I’ll need to learn new libraries. The last time I used VbScript, SOAP was just being released and implemented in the Microsoft stack.
Now I’ve been spoiled with writing code in Visual Studio or Eclipse. The intellisense helps you write code so much faster when the object library is new or you haven’t used it for some time. A quick Google search resulted in some nice goodies. There are a few VbScript IDEs available as free or for a small fee (less than $60 USD) providing much the same environment I have come to value. The one I liked the most was VbsEdit, http://www.vbsedit.com. I didn’t do a review of all the other packages. I chose this one because it had a number of things I wanted.
- Intellisense
- Debugger
- COM Object Browser
- Snippet Library
- Code Validation
So, even though I am taking a giant leap back 20 years, I find that people have brought new tools to make the task more friendly. Do you have a favorite editor or script library for VbScript. Please drop a note in our comments to benefit us all.
Thanks to all the folks who have continued to explore all the powerful things you can do with COM scripting, through VbScript or through PowerShell.
Cheers,
Ben