In my view it's more important to learn how to programme the thing you're
programming than it is to learn any given language. Especially if you
already have language experience. A language is a language. For the most
part all languages have pretty much the same functionality and really only
vary in the syntax and how well particular features are exposed and you'll
pick those up as you go, more or less. XSI and its SDK, on the other hand,
will take more time and is worthy of more effort. The SDK documentation can
be frustrating when you're beginning but it's not as bad, I believe, as some
people would have and it is your main portal into the SDK; learning how to
make the best use of it will pay dividends.
That said, as Andy and Bernard have already pointed out, because jscript has
been designed with security in mind it's less easy to expand. Languages like
Python and Perl have enormous numbers of libraries available, mostly in the
public domain. Python is beautifully, although somewhat pedantically
structured and while it does have some startup overhead my experience isn't
that it's 'massive' and I'm personally prepared to offset that against the
power it gives you.
I wouldn't bother with VBS though. It's a distinctly unpleasant language by
any standards, probably OK for short snippets but it rapidly runs out of
control on projects of even a moderate size where it quickly becomes almost
unreadable.
Most examples are in jscript, if you discount VBS.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On
> Behalf Of Andy Jones
> Sent: 07 May 2007 15:55
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> Subject: Re: 1/2 OT: Programming Languages for XSI
>
> The first thing to learn, in my opinion, is Python. After you're
> familiar with the object model and have a need to make something faster
> (but less flexible), I'd move from there to C++.
>
> The biggest reasons, in my opinion, for using Python over JScript and
> VBscript are that it gives you access to more libraries with extended
> functionality outside of XSI, and it is object-oriented.
>
> I'd go into more details, but for someone who already knows
> programming,
> it seems like sort of a no-brainer to me. (Of course, I'd say it was a
> no-brainer even if you didn't know programming.)
>
> I don't know about the Behavior thing. I think it's still on Piccolo.
> But I just don't think language syntax similarity would be a that good
> a
> reason to choose one language over another anyway.
>
> - Andy
>
> Prapas Akie wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I've been granted a temporary window out of the production pipeline
> > and am being sent to learn a new programming language.
> >
> > Ideally, I'd like to use this new tool to expand my use of XSI and
> > eventually use it with Behaviour.
> >
> > I have a _background_ in programming (cobol, fortran, pascal, basic)
> > which means getting into structure and logic of this new language
> > should not be a problem.
> >
> > I've heard a few opinions about Python over VBscript.
> >
> > Is there something better out there compatible with XSI and
> Behaviour?
> >
> > What holds the best results with the most potential (if possible)?
> >
> > If anyone has some real world experiences and their opinion on this
> > that they'd like to share, that will be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks and have a goodday.
> >
> > Akie Prapas
> > Infographiste 3D VFX
> >
>
>
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