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Thanks, Detroit's Black Helicopter, you've illustrated the point well. In your VB example, what is wscript? What's does the construct wscript.echo do? I'm a generation older than the writer (close to 50) but I was taught Pascal in college. The problem with starting with a OO language like VB is the lack of transparency. Yeah, I know, what's the difference between a function call and a method call? Well, if you have to ask that, why are you programming in an OO language?
I've been disturbed by what passes for programming these days. Take a look at any web page source - what is this? Its not programming - clearly no one person typed all of this...crap in! Its all cut and paste. I believe that the web is destroying programming more than anything.
So on one side, things look so complicated that its hard to understand what's going on under the covers but on the other you have companies trying to sell their products as no programming needed (sheesh, try making Access do anything useful!).
I find it distressing that big business (ie M$) is trying to sell programming as a process akin to manufacturing (and one that can be done better by a cheap off shore company) rather than the often creative process that it is.
