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| Authored by: DannyB on Wednesday, January 30 2013 @ 02:35 PM EST |
StarBasic is not a serious contender.
Under the same name as I am using here, I posted plenty of StarBasic code on
oooforum.org for a few years before and during the early years of Groklaw. If
you search out my posts there I think you might form the conclusion that I have
some experience.
A major drawback of StarBasic is you cannot create arbitrary data structures in
it. This is a huge problem. In fact, it was one of the major limitations on
what I could do in StarBasic.
You cannot create new classes in StarBasic. You cannot subclass. It does not
have first class functions (aka functions are a value that can be stored and
passed around as values -- important for binding event handlers to gui controls
for example).
While it is cross platform, it requires OpenOffice / LibreOffice to be installed
The Macros are delivered in the form of a document, such as a Draw document (my
favorite as you could determine from the website). Then the user must open the
document and click some control in order to initiate action. While this can be
useful, as some of my examples illustrated, it is not a replacement for a
general purpose programming language.
If you want that kind of language, then why not learn JavaScript instead of
StarBasic? It is also bound to a particular system, but more than one such
system. JavaScript runs on web browsers, but also in Flash, and Node.js, and
other things that incorporate JavaScript runtimes. Even modern LibreOffice
allows you to script in JavaScript. So if you're into LibreOffice macros, why
not use JavaScript which doesn't have the limitations I noted above?
Furthermore, just using it on the web, you can do pretty amazing things in
JavaScript. (See Google's website ChromeExperiments.com on their Chrome
browser.)
In conclusion, and respectfully, I think the case to learn StarBasic is pretty
weak. Even if all you know is basic, you would pick up a book on JavaScript and
(I'll just pick:) jQuery and be doing useful learning in a few hours.
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The price of freedom is eternal litigation.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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