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
