Winter Scripting Games: Profiles in Perfection
Erik Renes
As part of the 2008 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 Erik Renes, who received perfect scores in the VBScript Advanced and Windows PowerShell Beginners divisions.
Check out more Profiles in Perfection from the 2007 Scripting Games.
Erik Renes
It all started when I was about six years old and my dad taught me how to work with Commodore 64 BASIC. My first programs were along the lines of this:
10 INPUT $NAME 20 PRINT $NAME
But soon I moved on to more complex programs using IF THEN logic. In the mid-nineties we got a PC, whose native scripting environment was not as trivial as the one on the Commodore 64. Fast forward 10 years: it’s early in the 2000’s and I’m almost done with high school. Computer Science was an optional course I had enrolled in, because I always wanted to end up doing “something with computers.” The teacher showed us Java (1.3), and the mind boggling construct of “for-loops.” I did not understand a word he was saying, but this didn’t lessen my enthusiasm for computer science.
Another year later, with my high school diploma in my pocket, I started a Computer Science course at a university. There, all those (previously) hideously-complex things like for-loops and Object-Oriented development seemed trivial. School wasn’t very challenging once you understand the concept, which meant I was looking for something to do in my spare time. Enter the Scripting Games 2006. Because I had never used VBScript before the first Scripting Games, I was satisfied with the 73 points I scored back then. Last year, however, I didn’t want anything less than a perfect score, and I got it.
For the Scripting Games in 2008, I will try to compete in even more events, hopefully with a similar result to last year’s Games.
My tips for other scripters:
| • | There isn’t anything you can’t do with scripting. It might take you an insane amount of time, but nothing is impossible. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. |
| • | Use example scripts from other people, and try to understand them. You learn a lot from other people’s solution to the same problems. |
| • | Try the 2006 and 2007 events; you can only learn how to script if you script -- a lot. Finding something to script is the hardest part of scripting. |
