Something that on modern systems is only kind of replicated with COM/.NET alongside PowerShell, and it fails short of what was possible. Something I have alway

Something that on modern systems is only kind of replicated with COM/.NET alongside PowerShell, and it fails short of what was possible. Something I have always felt was a killer-feature of the Windows and Office platforms, and something the industry is moving away from. I never saw what you describe, but I'm sad to increasingly lose what interop we've had since the 1990s and 2000s in exchange for cross platform support, security of one kind or another, and silo'd cloud services. But then again, what you describe sounds worse not better. Like half "wow, malware playground", and half "I just wanted a nutcracker but all I have available is this hammer factory and the machine shop which built it". Would I see the past differently if I started there, then moved to this present? Would I see COM interop differently if I had started in a world of Apps with constrained interop based on a "share this content with a link" popups? Along with "if everything's top priority, nothing is", and "one size fits nobody very well", if a system is configurable for any task, does that mean it fits no task very well? A set of magnetic letters on a fridge door lets you rearrange the words to say whatever you want, but that doesn't make it "better than all novels".