[Shog9]

No, but not for lack of trying.

I can imagine trying to solve a problem like this in either; in theory, this is exactly the sort of thing the automation APIs should be good for...

In practice, you would get close and then hit a wall because something critical isn't exposed by the object model and the language itself offers no way around save for the ability to call down to components written in something else. At which point you're dealing with a lot more headaches.

The author illustrates something I think many of us too often forget: ease of use is often determined not by the intended use of the tooling, but by how easily they can be put to unintended uses - which in turn depends heavily on the ability of user to try stuff and observe what happens as a result.

I see more and more people - not programmers - poking around with JavaScript in their favorite web apps for the same reasons: low barrier to entry, low cost to failure, immediate gratification when they hit upon something that works.