Winter Scripting Games: Profiles in Perfection
Chris Osborne
As part of the 2007 Winter Scripting Games the Script Center is profiling competitors who recorded a perfect score in the 2007 Scripting Games. Here, in his own words, is a little something about Chris Osborne, who received a perfect score in the VBScript Advanced Division.
Check out more Profiles in Perfection from the 2007 Scripting Games.
Chris Osborne
Chris Osborne, Louisville, Kentucky: Land of beautiful horses and fast women. (Or is that the other way around?)
I am a Senior Infrastructure Engineer with TEKsystems supporting the WINTEL environments for their many clients. I started working in IT as a programmer in 1980 and moved over to infrastructure support in the early 90’s. By the late 90’s I had moved up to IT manager, only to return to my System Engineer status when the dotcom recession reduced our industry. I discovered early on that my programming background came in handy creating “surroundware”: the batch files, scripts, web pages and HTAs needed to connect dissimilar application, systems or networks.
Scripting Tips
| • | Use the Internet. There are many sources on the Internet that can help you get a start on a scripting solution or that can show you a technique that is applicable to your problem. Microsoft’s Script Center is one of the best but there are many other sources available. |
| • | Use a standard coding format and naming convention. I prefer to use the same convention used by Microsoft. It is fairly widespread and has the added advantage of making it easier to incorporate “borrowed” code from the Script Center into your scripts. <grin> |
| • | Comment your code. I can’t stress this enough. Good commenting habits save time, effort and confusion. This is where the difference between a professional scripter and a hack truly shows. |
| • | Use an editor that supports your language. The advanced features of a good editor take the drudgery out of scripting and leave you free to be creative. Using an editor like Notepad is like banging your head against the wall: it feels so good when you stop. |
| • | Use the Option Explicit command. This will save you a lot time and grief. There are enough challenges developing good scripts without adding poor typing abilities to them. |
| • | Create script logs. If your script is to run unattended then it needs to create a log so you can keep track of what it does. |
| • | Design you code to be flexible. |
| • | Design code to be reusable, and keep the code you write. The amount of code that can be reused with minor modifications is amazing. |
