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Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

Funnily, I'm almost exactly in the same situation right now, having recently switched jobs. With the exception that I don't have admin rights, and our sys admins as a matter of principle refuse to install any additional apps.

Windows does not come with any compilers or scripting languages installed out of the box (or so I thought. Thanks to HN - see below - I've now learned that there are some for .NET). But luckily, I discovered HTAs, and so now I'm happily implementing a small Emacs clone in it to get out of Notepad hell and back onto a path of sanity.

Also, I'm looking for a new job.

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For what it’s worth, there are a small number of interpreters and compilers included in Windows. They are for older versions of languages, so you will not be able to use the latest features.

wscript.exe can run JScript and VBScript.

PowerShell can run scripts. It has access the whole .NET runtime, so you can even make GUIs if you are determined enough.

There is a C# (csc.exe) compiler under c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET . There is also MSBuild.exe to run build scripts. If you want to get more off the beaten path there are also VB.NET (vbc.exe) and JScript.NET (jsc.exe) compilers.

If you can try typing “python.exe” in a command prompt on newer versions of Windows 10 and 11. It should open the Microsoft Store to install a modern Python interpreter.

Cool! Happy to hear there is a C# compiler, that should definitely come in handy.

I cannot install anything, but if the compiler is preinstalled, that will be a godsend.

Fortunately, an Emacs clone doesn't really have high requirements for a GUI, but if I end up finding HTAs too limiting, it shouldn't be too hard to port it to JScript.NET (I hope). For now, I find the ability to just use HTML/CSS for what is needed quite comfortable.

You don't need to "install" anything. There are portable apps out there.

Also a friend told me that base64 encoded zip archives copy-pasted through pastebins and the like aren't generally blocked by most scanners out there.

You don't understand. This is not about (circumventing) technical limitations, it's about the policy of not installing third-party apps. And I mean "install" in the general sense of "adding to your OS" - it's irrelevant whether that means downloading an .exe file, unpacking a zip folder, or running an installer. It's not a technical question.

Doesn't compiling your own exes violate that policy?

Probably when it's somebody else's code downloaded from the internet. However, I'd be a fool to ask whether it also applies to my own code ;-)

I believe there are projects to run linux in wasm in your browser. Maybe that's worth looking into.

> sys admins as a matter of principle refuse to install any additional apps

This is one reason why Excel is a popular programming environment!

+1.

The funniest part (in a shocking kind of way) was my conversation with them on the first day where I asked whether they could install Emacs for me, and the guy's reply was: "What is that?"

The silicon valley world. The HN world. Such a different mindset to the corporate Windows environments. Not really shocking, just different.

I used excel macros to run stuff that was banned on corporate PCs for many years. Never used it as a spreadsheet in that time!

I think powershell is considered a scripting language. Even though the version that is included with windows is outdated you can still do quite a bit with it.

And if you can use WSL you basically have all the linux cli stuff available to you.

And if they don't blacklist all executables you can probably just download and run zipped packages -- powershell core, python, go, vim/neovim, and probably emacs can all be run as if they were portable apps and for most things you won't need admin rights.

Technically, yes, I could do that - but they made it pretty clear what the company policy is, so I will certainly not download and install third-party software even where admin rights aren't necessary. But of course, the thought crossed my mind, too...

WSL would be a dream, but they said to me that they basically want all machines that they're responsible for to be the same. You see, there are two kinds of sysadmins: those who take their job to be enablers for the rest of the staff (within certain constraints) and there are some that want to make it as easy as possible to themselves, nevermind if that restricts the actual users.

putting an exe in a folder on your desktop counts as installation? is creating a word document also an installation?

It's about running third-party software. How exactly that resides on your computer is secondary.

You don't need administrative permissions to install many tools, including Visual Studio Code, or even xcopy-able emacs clones if that's more your jam.

If you mean you're not allowed to run any executables at all unless in a whitelist then WTH, what kind of company expects developers to use such an environment, and what for?

AFAIK you don't need to install emacs on Windows, you just can unzip the binaries you can download on the official website on any folder, even your desktop, and run the EXE file on the \bin folder, without the need of admin privileges.

True, but that would certainly be against the "spirit" of their policy. It crossed my mind, though.

What about something like https://vscode.dev/

It runs a lighweight copy of vscode entirely in the browser.

It looks like the emacs keybinding extension is available for use.

Wow, HTAs. I didn't remember the last time I heard that.

Frankly, I had never heard of them until a couple of weeks ago. :-)

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