Scripting is not for everyone, no. While the scripting language included with TESCS is fairly simple, that doesn't change the fact that using it entails that mystical, zen-like trance commonly known as "programming", where time exists spatially rather than as a Euclidian construct, strange words and concepts like "variable" and "compile" and "function" drift lazily throughout your (non-linear) stream of thought, and debugging is suddenly not just something faraway and byzantine-sounding, but a gritty reality.

Okay, to be a little more prosaic. Scripting isn't just for everyone, no - it requires patience, a certain ability to think logically and objectively, and above all, a mind that is not just scientifically oriented, but creatively oriented. Some of the best programmers are the kind of people you'd normally think of as artists. That's because thinking of creative ways to solve difficult problems requires imagination as well as reasoning, and debugging incredibly complex code requires just as much intuition as methodology.

But so as not to scare off everyone, it should also be said of the TESCS scripting language that there's really not much... to it. There are only a handful of commands and functions you'll have to learn - in essence, it's as if you'll be speaking a language that only has about a hundred words in it, and an extremely straightforward grammar. Much of that language reads like plain English, too, in fact; unlike one of my own personal favorite programming languages, Perl. ;}

Before we get too much farther, I need to get something out of the way, too. There doesn't actually appear to be a name for the TESCS scripting language, which is about as absurd a notion to a programmer as serving Kool-Aid with filet mignon would be to a master chef. (Although in many ways, this particular scripting language does somehow remind me of Kool-Aid.) It's just not right, you know? So, in the interest of more easily being able to refer to this "new language" you're going to be learning, I've taken it upon myself to name it. Not entirely arbitrarily, mind you - there are hints and clues throughout what limited documentation does exist for the language, that seem to suggest the language may actually go by the name I have picked for it:

Script.

Yeah, that's it. A little like naming your firstborn son "Bob", but - hey, a lot of people do name their firstborn "Bob", after all, right?

With that taken care of. Let's take a closer look at what's involved in learning a programming language. Perhaps then you'll have a better notion of whether this really is for you.