Winter Scripting Games: Profiles in Perfection
Ben Simkins
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 Ben Simkins, who received a perfect score in the VBScript Advanced Division.
Check out more Profiles in Perfection from the 2007 Scripting Games.
Ben Simkins
Hi, my name is Ben Simkins, and I managed to get a perfect score in the VBScript Advanced Division last year.
I was born and grew up in the UK, and moved to Switzerland in 1999. I am married with nearly two children (V2 RTM in the next two weeks!).
I started my (mechanical) engineering degree very wary of computers. Surprisingly, the first thing that got me interested was Word (2.0), as my handwriting is atrocious. From there, things went downhill rapidly - next it was Excel, followed by several months of Minesweeper and Tetris (had to get it out of my system!)
And then I did an 'introduction to programming' course - Pascal, followed by a touch of Modula2. From then on I was hooked, and took every programming option I could: assembler, then C, then C++. By the time I finished my degree I had serious doubts about whether I still wanted to be a mechanical engineer!
I did end up working for 3 years as a mechanical engineer, but was never really convinced. When I moved to Switzerland and had the chance to change, I landed a job in a small IT company where I discovered SQL, VB6, HTML, JavaScript, ASP and VBS.
In 2007 I moved to a bigger company, and finally was able to immerse myself completely in the brave new world of .NET, mostly C#. Just recently I've started to get excited about F#, which is a functional language, so it stretches my mind a bit!
I missed out on the Scripting Games this year, but I think I might try to solve the problems with F#.
PS: When I initiated the Around the World with Dr. Scripto series, it was in reference to the film Amélie Poulain.
My scripting tips? First, I like to initialise string arrays using Split. I'm sure some purists might shriek, but it fits on one line:
strDays = ";Mon;Tue;Wen;Thu;Fri;Sat;Sun" arrDays = Split(strDay, ";")
Having said that, don't attempt to write your own date-time library! You can find all manner of long-winded and bug-ridden home-made solutions on the internet, when it's actually sitting right there in the OS, staring at you. Whether it be in VBScript, PowerShell, or even JavaScript, the Date object exists, so use it!
