Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
Tim Newsham wrote:
I always thought that python should be taught to young students
(elementary, high school, first year college or non-cs college
interested in programming). Its fairly "clean" and easy to learn and
use without having a deep understanding of programming. I showed my
wife, who is not technically inclined, a few things and she got it
pretty quickly. Its still fairly new though and I wonder how many
teachers who teach this class of student knows about it.
I think it would be great if HOSEF could play some role in pushing
this kind of knowledge to teachers who could then have an impact on
young minds.
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
<BONK> <BONK> <BONK>
That was the sound of my head dribbling on the desk. Ow!
We only need "StarBasic" if you insist that we need to replicate/replace
the "Visual Basic for Applications" crapfest found in Microsoft Office.
We don't want to migrate people from one office suite to another, we
want to *transcent* the office suite. You can't take-on Microsoft
head-on. That way likes madness (and a bruised, flat forehead).
The (used to) teach Logo to kids. No reason to rot their minds with
the taffy of Basic. (Please God no, not another generation of Basic
addicts.)
Jim
