So here you have it from the horse’s mouth on the future of VBScript: This week at Microsoft IT Forum in Barcelona, Jeffery Snover (architect of Windows PowerShell) said that VBScript is “feature complete,” meaning it wouldn’t be developed any further, but that it also wasn’t considered “outdated” and would be included in future versions of Windows for the “forseeable future.”
Sure, PowerShell is easier to use in many, many ways, but that doesn’t mean VBScript is useless! I guess the big point here is, “the right tool for the right job.” If you have a VBScript that works, keep it! PowerShell won’t make it quit working! In fact, I had a good talk with an attendee here about migrating scripts. He asked if it’d be necessary to convert all of his VBS files to PowerShell. No way!! If they work, leave ’em alone. While you CAN do an almost line-by-line conversion of VBScript to PoSH, there’s little need to do so just for the fun of it (unless you just have that kind of spare time – in which case, I want your job). Instead, start using PoSH for new tasks. Small ones, at first, to help ease into the new shell and it’s language. If you’re super comfortable with VBScript, keep using it for longer mission-critical tasks so that you can get those completed sooner. As you become more comfortable with PoSH, you’ll start finding that it offers a faster way to get those tasks completed… which is why you’ll wind up using it more and more.
Ultimately, that’s the goal, here: Get your job done faster. Period. If VBScript dos that for you, fine. If PoSH does it, fine. If hiring an intern does it, great. Whatever works! Of course, PoSH is the first attempt by Microsoft to write an administrative shell with the specific intent of getting things done faster, so it has a good chance of being your “tool of choice” for any number of tasks.
It’s a lot like 1996, when VBScript came out. Did I stop using BAT files right away? Heck no. I had a lot of them that worked great. So I did little stuff in VBS. As I became more comfortable with it, I did more and more. Sometimes, I needed to add functionality to a BAT file and it became easier to rewrite it fresh in VBS, because VBS could do the new thing a bit faster or more easily. Eventually, I had very little BAT in my life. Now, PoSH will start being used the same way. In a couple of years, I’m sure I’ll be using it almost exclusively… and you can, too.
