It wasn't just VBScript - one could use any language that registered its interpreter with Windows Scripting Host, though VBScript was the most popular due to be

It wasn't just VBScript - one could use any language that registered its interpreter with Windows Scripting Host, though VBScript was the most popular due to being one of the two options shipped with the OS (the other was JScript, a javascript implementation). I have at the very least seen WSH support in glory days of ActivePerl, I think ActivePython and ActiveTCL included that as well. There was also I think a REXX implementation available. Also, the same approach of using COM for everything is continued in PowerShell and generally all new Windows APIs - a lot of stuff in PowerShell is thin wrappers (if at all) over COM APIs, and you can definitely call custom COM objects as well.