[GNC] Balsheet-eg.scm problem

[John Ralls]

> On Aug 23, 2018, at 8:59 AM, Stephen M. Butler <kg7je at arrl.net> wrote:
> 
> On 08/23/2018 08:04 AM, Christopher Lam wrote:
>> I can confirm loading of eguile reports is different. Hence I could not
>> trigger loading. Hence there's no test for them.
>> 
>> Off they go, please!
> 
> Ach!  OK.  So what language should I learn this winter?  Anything that
> looks like:  COBOL, BASIC, Fortran, PL/SQL, Pascal (just a smidgen),
> Transact, SPL (HP-3000)?  I have been thinking that putting C under my
> belt might be useful -- then I retired!

Pascal and HP-SPL are both Algol descendants, as is C, so learning that will likely be closest to your work experience. I don't think there are many people writing new code in procedural languages like COBOL, FORTAN, and BASIC.

If you want to learn 21st-century programming idioms I recommend Python, but unless you've already encountered object-oriented programming you'll want to start with a "how-to-program" book rather than the language reference. Object orientation requires a different approach to breaking the problem into solvable pieces ("decomposition") than modular ("block-oriented") languages like Pascal, HP-SPL, and C. 

That said, if you want to write reports that are internal to GnuCash you've got to learn Scheme. If you're willing to use a SQL backend you can query the database and use any language you like and can find a compiler for on the results.

Regards,
John Ralls