Is it fun to script in SL?

I'm only six days old, so forgive me if my question seem silly. But I'm trying to figure out whether it's worth taking the time to learn how to script for SL, given that there are so many existing scripts for so many things already. I have some experience with C and object-oriented languages for adventure games (e.g., TADS), but I'm a hobbyist who does it for fun, not a professional programmer. Is it fun to script in SL? Is there a market for a scripter? What sort of cutting-edge things are scripters working on?

I'm still not sure what I want to do with myself. I'm reasonably proficient with Photoshop, but I'm not really a clothes horse, and I don't know if I want to go that route. I like the idea of building something that will make people ooh and ahh (like Chosen Few's Star Trek exhibit, wow!), and I can see that would require serious scripting. I also like the idea of building poses, skins and animations; I have ordered Poser 6 and will start playing with that this weekend.

Anyway, is scripting fun? Profitable?

LSL is my first "serious" foray into programming. I'm not a computer scientist of any variety - but I find it to be a bagfull of giggles to script. The language isn't too strange but does have cavats - some of the library call naminng conventions are lacking, for instance - but nothing that makes it a chore for most things.

I'd definatly say learning LSL is worth the effort.

as a complete utter noob with scripting since i havnt even touched the thing in over 9 years, trying out SL's diffrent free scripts and tweak you can get some really nice effect,,

Wiki page helps, but its very confusing for me, actually just reading this forum i picked up a nice menu script earlier, and other things.

profitable i dont know, im not that good but adding to builds they add alot of nice details.

I especially liked the one wich made a prim light/on/off someone posted.

Scrips in SL make the world go round. I don't know what I would do with myself if I didn't know how to script. You don't need to make learning a chore. Learning new things is half the fun of it.

Like Thili said, it's easiest to pick up open-source scripts and mess around with them. The wiki is also an invaluable resource for both learning and reference.

LSL is fairly safe compared to something like C, for example you're not going to be passing pointers around and other such things. In that respect it's pretty good in you fancy trying it out. The overall structure is fairly simple.

If you've got a good feel for programming you tend to know what you think the language should let you do and can normally find it somewhere on the forums or in the help guide. Maybe someone new to it might be able to tell you better but I could imagine it being a bit hard to get to understand what you're up to from the user guide as it's much more a reference manual which is not even that detailed in a lot of places.

So overall I could imagine it being fairly hard to learn LSL as a first language if you've got no experience as there isn't much in the way of training - I'd be interested to hear from anyone who had learnt it as a first language. You could probably learn a fair bit from the scripts on here though.

I've heard there's a shortage of scripters but then that might be because people want a perfect custom script in about 30 minutes for about $100 (Linden, not real dollars) so I'm not that surprised! I'd guess a lot of the good scripters are professional programmers so it's not really a big change from RL and you're not even respected for doing it.......hope I don't sound bitter, just passing on my brief SL experience.

Is it fun?
Definitely.

Why not use existing scripts?
Well, they never seem to do exactly what you want. Whenever I have used other scripts I have always ended up tweaking them or rewriting completely so I get exactly what I want. However, there is much to be learned from good scripters.

Is it profitable?
Hmm. Well if you get known as a good scripter, then people will occasionally commission. But in general, it's not really a pursuit that will make you an SL millionaire. In general, people pay for the product not the script, so probably the best way to make money as a scripter is to have good ideas for scripted products (which sell at premium) and sell those.

/esc

When my friend was annoying me, I whipped up a push-ban script on the spot, and effectively banned him from a 96 meter radius. As an added touch it would say "Served." every time the guy hit the sensor field. When I finally decided to turn it off, he didn't even bother retaliating.
Not recommended for anyone you don't know well enough to be assured they won't report you.

Thanks for the feedback. I've read through the manual provided by the Lindens, and I'm going to go ahead and try to write a few simple scripts now. Thanks!

i would have to say yes it is fun but thats all on the person or persons doing it i love the challange.......from it being in the begining of learning what others did and going from there to the point of scripting my own now ...
could be wrong but i think just like excelling at any hobby or job when you do well
it builds char..
~fetal

Can we let the 2-year old threads die? =)

No, we can't!

From a software engineer's perspective, scripting in LSL is horrendous. Give me the control of C any day. My main complaint with LSL is that it's extremely limited -- there is either "no way" or "a very hackish/annoying" way to do most things. And without a web server driving your data, any attempt to accumulate growing data will quickly be met with a stack/heap collision.

Scripting is fine for extremely simple things, but I liken it to JavaScript's role on the web. You don't write full-blown applications or programs with featured UIs in JavaScript -- or if you do, they make heavy use of XMLRPC (which is itself very constrained in LSL) in an AJAX environment.

It would be very nice if they actually delivered on their hints of providing .NET assembly support sometime in the future... but Hell will freeze over first.

I can't write scripts from scratch, but given time I can read enough to make changes. Enough changes to make something totally different. That is a challenge for me personally, and I find it a real hoot!

(As long as it's dredged up anyway: It *is* kinda fun to see a post from Ricky Shaftoe as a newbie!)

I want to hear the rest of the story. Did Ricky ever script? did he make money? did he find love? or did he get himself banned?

*smile* I know he scripted his poseballs. (He's a pretty accomplished animator, at least imho... and no, it wasn't specifically his poseballs that so annoyed me that I took up scripting. )