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Comment by ww520 | Hacker News Reader

Another Microsoft's best kept secrets is using Javascript for shell script. It has been there forever since Javascript first came out. It's called JScript but it's just Javascript with Windows support like running ActiveX Objects, which let you access the file system, OS, network, etc. You can pretty much drive the Windows system with it through ActiveX Automation. Also you can do Office application integration like Excel Automation with it.

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For me it's Web Essentials 2012. Create and compile LESS files among other great things

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/07d54d12-7133-...

Related, but for the same reasons, you could also write classic ASP using JavaScript (as opposed to VBScript). Years ago, I spent months trying to convince my team to let me use JavaScript instead of VBScript in our ASP files.

I know. When I need to do some Windows scripting, I'd do it in JScript rather than VBScript. Like when a user wants to merge two Excel files, nothing beats to whip out a simple JScript to do it. Running it is simple. They just double click on the JScript file and done. Business users love it.

And more: you can create new ActiveX Objects from within that JScript script giving you access to just about anything. This has been there forever (I started using this in 2006) and I use it to let my users insert their code into the process of my desktop application.

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