Programming help for a noob like me.

Greetings all, first thank you for taking the time to read my post. I have been in IT Engineering for almost 20 years and programming is something I have steered away from with the exception of basic script creation for command line instructions.

My basic question is this:
I have started to learn VBScript and WSH to start my programming learning. Now, the goal that I'm trying to accomplish is as follows:

I want to create a self extracting program (simple but as professional as it can be based on my beginner state) that will run a few programs (3rd party, GUI based programs) as well, a few scripts. My general question is VBScripting and WSH a good place to start to learn just how to do it or should I look at other resources, guides and maybe different language(s) or scripting services.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and respond. I appreciate any suggestions on guides, tutorials or just general information that can help accomplish the goal mentioned above.

Best Regards,

Jesse