While I very much wouldn't want to live in this world too, I'm pretty sure VBScript was an answer to JavaScript. Internet Explorer 3.0 implemented both VBScript

While I very much wouldn't want to live in this world too, I'm pretty sure VBScript was an answer to JavaScript. Internet Explorer 3.0 implemented both VBScript and JScript (Microsoft's slightly incompatible version of JavaScript) at the same time. Microsoft of the 1990s seemed to never be able to decide whether they want to follow "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" or NIH, so they usually both implemented slightly-incompatible versions of popular technologies, and then shoved in their own in-house technologies alongside. That's how you got both ActiveX Controls and Java Applets (both sucked). That's how you got both Visual J++ and Visual Basic (J++ was superior), and later both J# and C# (this time C# was superior, but could you expect anything less from Anders Hejlsberg?). That's how you got both VBScript and JScript running on JScript (a little know fact that made it possible for me to script Windows 2000 machines without running through a decade's supply of vomit bags). If there was no JavaScript, I think Microsoft would have gone with something like ActiveX, instead of rushing to deliver their own a quick and dirty implementation of a scripting language. But we wouldn't get an almost-decent scripting language embedded in every windows machine, and I would have had to automate all these machines using BATCH files!