Julian Yap wrote:
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
Woot! Woot!
Julian, I'm really looking forward to you being on-island.
Python (and perhaps Ruby) are about as close as it gets to Lisp without
plunging headlong into the rabbit hole of executable data (Lisp
macros). If we're going to sign up to something, it might as well be
Python (and perhaps Ruby).
For those of you who haven't done the requisite Google search, here is
Julian's blog: http://julianyap.blogspot.com/
jim
