programing languages simular to Secondlife

i was curious if there was a programing language that was simular in operation to LSL. i know LSL is based off C however what i would like is something that i can place objects and use linked messages simular to prims. like being able to set a square to be a button and drop a script in it to interact with a main script.

if anyone knows of a language like this please let me know

That really depends a lot on exactly what aspects of the LSL scripting you want to capture.

If you want to actually write LSL and be able to test them with a reaction similar to SL, LSLEditor lets you do that, to some extend. It's not visual, though, and in fact takes a bit of thinking to set up the test project correctly.

If you want to program (Windows-like) applications, pretty much every major language has visual editors to drag and drop GUI components like buttons and such, and wire events to them.

If you want to script graphical shapes and images, perhaps something like Flash and its ActionScript would be useful, or perhaps Sun's new Lively Kernel.

That was just off the top of my head; to give some examples of the possible environments.

Edited to add: If you want to just fiddle around with programming principles and structures, something like Scratch could be useful. It even has a specific LSL-builder version (Scratch4SL).

im looking for a program language that is as close to programing in second life as possible.. not LSL.

for example.

i have 4 objects.. the main object (base prim) the graphical object , and 2 button objects.

in second life youd normally link these 4 objects. and then open each one to insert a script to relay back to the main object

i want to experiance that in real programing. a programing language thats like programing with linked prims. something i can make a graphical game (like my game DEAL)

i guess what im trying to get at is that i want to make a downloadable game of deal. something for entertainment .. and not to be linked in any way to second life.

but my only experiance with programing is a dead language (qbasic) and LSL

If your looking for a game for the internet, try Java.

Other than syntax and basic control structures, LSL doesn't have very much in common with C.

The linked prim model isn't properly part of LSL. Instead, it's part of a complex graphics engine and environment, with an interface (API) made available to LSL via the the various ll functions. You could, in theory, use a different language, if someone would implement it. It's just like the ability to use C/C++ or Basic to program Microsoft Windows, or to use C#, C++, or Basic to program Microsoft .Net.

I don't know the game you want to implement, but if it requires 3D graphics and the like, you probably want some sort of game engine. The programming language itself is likely to be secondary. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine for some information on game engines.

no DEAL is a game i make in second life. its a game somewhat simular to zyngo / slingo its been around for almost a year now. i just want to make it as easy as possible. i saw java looks simple. but i still not sure everyone gets what i am asking for.

i want to have something that uses non 3d objects.. so. for example.. i would draw a square.. it is its own object. i can put script inside of that object and have it communicate with other objects... like how SL is..

It sounds like Flash (or Shockwave) is really what you're after.
You draw objects there, and can attach various behavior and code blocks to them, using ActionScript, to manipulate them and make them communicate. It's not quite like LSL, but uses the same idea of rather loosely coupled objects with their own code, and additionally sounds like the right platform to make small-ish games to distribute over the Internet. It's quite extensively used for exactly that.

Java is pretty heavyweight (applets nonewithstanding), and is an absolute bitch to program actual graphics in, so I'd not recommend that for what you say you want to do.
If you do go for Java, looking into Processing (a framework build on top of Java to make graphics programming easy) might be a good idea.

Silverlight is a good alternative to Flash... and it's Free (and you can write code for it in a variety of languages).

You could even try doing it in JavaScript, inside a web browser, if your graphic requirements aren't too high.

Don't get hung up on the "put scripts into objects" idea. That's just a metaphor because of the way SL works, primarily because people get used to the idea of manipulating objects before they get into scripting them. Other systems may or may not describe it that way. You're more likely to have an object at the programming language level (i.e., in object-oriented programming). LSL doesn't have that concept, but most modern languages do.

I agree about avoiding Java (and don't confuse Java and JavaScript).

Silverlight may be an option, too, yes.
Microsoft is pushing it rather heavily, but support for it is still rather spotty, including a very scary roadmap of known breaking changes between auto-updated versions.
This means that you may need to be on top of releases and update your code as Microsoft pushes new versions to the clients, and, due to the releases on various platforms being staggered in time (currently up to a full half year), there will be periods where your code just cannot run on some platforms, no matter what you do.
This is primarily an issue between the current version 1 and the just-released-on-the-Windows-platform version 2. I hope and expect that they will not make a similar insane release roadmap between version 2 and 3, but MS refuses to even comment on that, let alone give any promises, when asked.

This is not meant as the mandatory "let's slam MS", but it *is* an issue if considering Silverlight professionally.
It may still be good enough, and technically, I am quite stoked to have pretty much the full .Net environment available that way. It is certainly a powerful platform, with the option to use your language of choice amongst several.

Sun's Lively Kernel is a browser/JavaScript solution, doing away with HTML and replacing it with scriptable graphical objects. I'm not sure how it turns out; it's still a pretty obscure project, and doesn't have the heavy clout of something like MS's or Adobe's projects, but it looks quite funky.

Incidentally, contrary to popular belief, JavaScript is an amazingly expressive and modern language. It is often misunderstood, tied to a legacy of making HMTL objects blink, and the development tools/IDEs *suck*, but the language itself is quite elegant and powerful, if all-too-easy to misuse.
-And with Google's Chrome browser just having raised the bar for JavaScript performance by nearly a factor 10, and open-sourced their implementation, we can expect other browsers to follow suit.

It certainly is. If you can forgive a bit of geekiness, JavaScript is the C of scripting languages. And that is not meant to be a compliment.

But Firefox with the Firebug extension is a tolerable debugging environment for JavaScript.

Thanks for the info around Lively Kernel. I'll put that on my infinite list of things to learn.

Seems to me that programming the game is trivial compared to what would be involved in choosing, configuring, and (especially) maintaining a reliable and secure method of collecting RL money from users playing it. So if that's the goal, then whatever platform is chosen for monetary transactions will probably have more impact on choice of the graphical / game implementation language than the abstract "goodness" of the languages themselves.