Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS raised prices so people will now start renting their office products instead

On 09/25/2012 11:51 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote:
> > My guess the group that complains the most about switching because of
> > macros would be the second group
> Objection.
>
> The point is that those people who actually use "office software" in
> companies have absolutely no influence on what they work with. It's the
> manangsters and administrictators who (pretend to) "decide" about this.
>
> > because they only know a few languages at most (VBA and what they
> > languages they learned as an undergraduate)
> I don't know any scientist or engineer who has ever learned Visual
> Basic at university. And I know only *very* few who have *ever* learned
> it at all.
>
> > and do not want to learn another since their primary function is not
> > programming.
> A lot of scientists and engineers, if they use any scripting/programming
> languages for "software automation" etc. tend to prefer languages that
> provide an interactive commandline interpreter, besides other criteria
> that VBA doesn't fulfil. A lot of those I know have learned Python as
> their genuine "bread and butter" scripting & programming language. Some
> even learn it as a "first language" at university these days.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Wolfgang
As an engineer, now retired, I used BASIC for many years, then took
a class in Pascal and wrote some code in Pascal.  You are correct--
all I wanted, in almost all cases, was command-line input and screen
or print (or both) output.  I first wrote BASIC on a teletype machine
connected by acoustic modem to a mainframe somewhere in Texas.
Eventually I went to work for an outfit that had an HP "desktop"--
a great big machine about 3 feet high that saved files on cassette
tape, and used HP-BASIC, which was a bit more powerful than the
standard.  Finally there was a company that had a CPM machine,
and I could do standard BASIC in house.  That's also where I first
wrote Pascal.  It wasn't Borland, it was somebody else's, I don't
remember the name. When PCs became affordable, Borland's
Pascal came out, and it was nice, especially at first, before they
complicated it!  The nearest thing I ever got to graphics was a
batch of xxx pr *** marks printed on a sheet of paper!  Crude
graphics indeed, but you could see the general shape of a filter
characteristic.

I never wanted to learn Visual Basic or the Pascal equivalent--I forget
what it was called. I was too busy doing engineering, and the tool
that I had was sufficient at the time. That's not to say that I didn't use
commercial graphical programs when they came out.  I made a
great deal of use of them, but I also realized that a whole lot of
hours and a lot of abstruse math went into them, and that's not
what I was there to do.  EEsof's Touchstone and the AutoCAD
programs saved a tremendous amount of time and breadboarding,
and I'm sure they paid for themselves, even at their exorbitant
prices.

--doug


--
Blessed are the peacekeepers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A.M. Greeley


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