David Kastrup wrote:

>  spooq <spoooq@[...].com> writes:
>  
> > I would like to suggest the newbie learns VBA. The financial world
> > lives and breathes Excel. VBA is by far the language most likely to be
> > of use to someone entering that world. It's pretty clear programming
> > is a tool for his/her use, rather than something that (s)he wants to
> > do for it's own sake. Having said that, Excel can be viewed as a type
> > of DSL in it's own right, so pushing the boundaries of what can be
> > done 'natively' is a great place to start.
>  
>  Isn't VBA rather similar to Ruby, anyway?

Not remotely. It has its roots in Visual Basic, which Microsoft abandoned a
few years ago in its zeal to sell a different, newer language to all its
loyal adherents. VBA will suffer the same fate in time, because it is owned
by a corporation whose goal is to sell new products to old customers.

VBA is not a very good model for teaching programming principles, and it is
important to remember it is a single-vendor product, one that will rise or
fall with that vendor's fortunes. Also Microsoft has no incentive to
cooperate with third parties -- those will good long-term recall will
remember the brouhaha surrounding Microsoft and Java.

-- 
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com