Question

I’m just looking for people’s opinions on this…

I really got worried when Second Life came out; I thought it was going to be a game changer for the Internet; Until I realized that outside of programmers and college students there really aren’t that many people with the sort of hardware and Internet connection requirements needed to have a decent user experience with Second Life.

That compounded with the fact that a Linden Labs server can really only handle about 70 people visiting a land at one time. Thus whatever interactive 3D content you create on Second Life cannot possibly generate the number of hits that you might get with a traditional web app.

But even so, for the future…when maybe they find a solution to this problem, is it worth learning LSL?

Answer 1

As usual with such questions, it depends on your goals.

Reasons to learn LSL:

• You just want to understand how such distributed/parallel/interactive systems work.
• You’re already involved with SecondLife and want to stretch yourself.
• You have a contract with a company that wants to establish a SecondLife presence.

Reasons not to learn LSL:

• There aren’t enough hours in a week to dabble with everything.
• There are plenty of languages that have something to teach you that you’ll more likely use.
• Low probability that a job opportunity to use it will fall out of the sky.

I have nothing against LL or SL, and might dabble with LSL for fun if I had nothing else to do. But I already have lots of other things to do.