Despite advice to the contrary, I'm still working on my scripting skills every day. I dissagree that folks like me shouldn't bother learning to program, being better served by spec'ing a system and handing it off to a developer. To me that's the same as having a ghostwriter author your novel or hiring a translator instead of learning the local language.
I've taken the time to familiarize myself with several scripting languages; UserTalk, Python and Applescript. All of them are pretty much just like english, only you have to put the words into a certain way for them to form a script that works.
Basic conclusion: scripting is just like writing in a new language, only you're not communicating with humans who can interpret your feeble command of the language, it has to be pretty much right the first time. But there's help, you use a special text processor called an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that aids you with the syntax of your script.
I have no illusions that I will be able to program any applicationn of meaning if it needs to do complex routines or store data in a database, it'll be a while until I master level. In the meantime there's plenty of ways to utilize very powerful applications and use their in-and-outputs to pass data to and from my scripts.
You access these through xml-rpc. Currently I'm writing a script that talks to an rss aggregator I have running 24/7 on a server. My script makes a call to the aggregator and asks for all the recent items from a feed I'm subscribed to. It returns that information to my script. This way I have a script that has all the benefits of an rss aggregator engine with none of the code needed to run it.
Whatever I wind up creating may not be sufficient to distribute as an application, but it will at least provide for great proto-typing that I can hand off to a pro.
