Suppose there were several projects mostly maintained by smart interns, who eventually leave after a period of time. Scripts are used here and there in key parts, for example, to back up a database, rename it, zip it, move it over ssh, unzip it, and then to restore it with different settings. You know, the scripting stuff.
The programming languages for the application side is set, but those for scripts have been relaxed. Currently there are probably healthy mix of bash and .bat file, and maybe some Perl.
1) To avoid language proliferation, and 2) because I don’t want to force bash upon future Windows programmers, I’d like to set an ‘official’ scripting language.
Google picked Python for this, and it’s famous for being readable, easy to learn, and having good library; however, I personally don’t find it that readable compared to C-like grammar, Pascal, or Ruby.
In any case, if you were to be forced to use only one scripting language on a Windows machine (with Cygwin if you want to) for all scripting, what would you like it to be, and why?
Related religious wars:
PowerShell – designed from the ground up to be a Windows scripting language, and it can hook into the CLR for advanced functionality.
(yes, I realize this doesn’t run under cygwin… but why is that a requirement?)