Lot's of designers have learnt a little programming/scripting.

A lot can write small macros, routines or programs in languages like basic. RhinoScript is akin to this, based on VBscript (Visual Basic Script). It is much easier and quicker to write a solution here, the help is targeted at users with limited programming experience, and the help is quite extensive (at least in comparison with .NET rhino command documentation).

VB.NET is an extended, more capable version of Basic with Object Oriented programming included. C# is a variation of C++ (primarily with managed memory so you don't need to release memory). Users with no (or limited) training in programming will find it really heavy work to work in this enviroment, although there are some very helpful users on the Rhino/Grasshopper forums that can assist when difficulties arise. The help/documentation is being improved but is not extensive, it assumes advance user knowledge.

There's many reasons for sophisticated programming to use .NET. The most important to me was debugging, RhinoScript started grinding to a halt once the script was more than 100 lines. I've also been able to form decent libraries of functions/code to reuse over multiple plug-ins.

I was aprehensive in translating my plug-ins from RhinoScript to C#, but I haven't looked back. If you want to run a script from Grasshopper, you don't have a choice.

Hope this is informative, let me know if you want anthing clarified.

Cheers,

Jon