Ed Wilson: What is an advanced Scripter?

The Summer Scripting Games are underway and once again, the age old question raises its head: what is beginning scripting, and what is advanced scripting. It is always difficult in creating the events to know what is beginner and what is advanced. There are lots of people who have been messing around with VBScript for years, who still classify themselves as beginners simply because they have had no formal training.

Then there are others who, have been working with it for a short time, but they spend all their time working with VBScript, and they consider themselves advanced. Every year with the scripting games, we get feedback about an event being too hard for beginner, too easy for advanced, or even too hard for advanced... It all boils down to this: something is hard if you have not done it before, and is easy if you know how to do it.

I used to think that my Microsoft Press book: VBScript Step by Step was a beginner book—that is until I looked at an “advanced VBScript book” one day, and realized that I had covered all the “advanced” stuff in the Step by Step book. It is all about learning the material—try not to get too hung up on the labels.