[LUAU] Re: Hosef

[Julian Yap]

Wayne,
I think that teaching/learning StarBasic is a dead end.  This is
from someone who learnt Visual Basic in high school as part of
the curriculum.

Learning StarBasic is another vendor lock in but this time a
technological one.  Other than working with OpenOffice, where
else are these skills translatable?

Teaching Python on the other hand gives you shell scripting
skills, web development skills, application development skills,
etc...

Mark Shuttleworth (guy who funded and began Ubuntu) has also
prepared to put out software bounties to fund work in creating
Python scripting interfaces to OpenOffice and other tools:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/bounty.html

With Google putting engineers into the work of OpenOffice
(http://news.com.com/Google+throws+bodies+at+OpenOffice/2100-7344_3-5920762.html),
I wouldn't be surprised if this happened sooner rather than
later.

>From http://www.python.org/Quotes.html:
"Python has been an important part of Google since the
beginning, and remains so as the system grows and evolves. Today
dozens of Google engineers use Python, and we're looking for
more people with skills in this language." said Peter Norvig,
director of search quality at Google, Inc.

Regards,
Julian

=== Quoted from Wayne ===
I think everyone will look down at what I am going to say, but I
feel 
obligated to mention it.

The programming skill that is most critically needed is, hold
your 
breath, StarBasic (or any Visual Basic equivalent that works
with 
OpenOffice.org).

If we want our hope of migration from Microsoft Office to
OpenOffice.org 
(& eventually from Windows to Linux) to have any chance of
success (& to 
help Massachusetts' brave move to standardize on ODF), we will
need an 
army of professional as well as amateur StarBasic programmers
who can, 
at least initially, efficiently convert Office macros to OOo 
equivalents.  Of course, when the skill level elevates, we can
further 
talk about embedding python, MySQL, or even plone scripts into
OOo via 
UNO bridges.

I am trying to help a couple of non-profit legal clinics to
switch to 
OOo/StarOffice.  Lack of StarBasic programmers is the most
determining 
bottleneck.   Wayne