Best Scripting Environment Ever. Best Desktop Technology Ever.

IE (even as far back as 5.0) + HTML + JavaScript +
Scripting.FileSystemObject on Windows.

It has been right under our noses all these years.  Just like AJAX was.

I used to do ASP.NET, but now I do a lot of work on very walled off,
locked down systems, and am often in need of a scripting language.
Usually I end up doing something "creative".  But recently I had the
good fortune of being truly checkmated.  I had only a very walled off
Windows 2003 machine to work with.  But this turned out to be great
because instead of loading Powershell or Visual Studio, it forced me
to try writing a utility using JavaScript and HTML.  It was
outstandingly productive.  Is there any simpler *desktop* UI
technology than HTML in a browser?  And any more powerful scripting
language than JavaScript?  How could I have missed this all these
years?

It is amazing how far backwards we went with ASP.NET, WPF etc.

Mike