I'm a little surprised at the general SL hate going on here, mostly from people who have never actually done anything in it. I haven't logged on for a while, but when I was involved a few years ago I had a great time building multi-agent systems inside of SL and pushing the limits of what their environment can do. For example, here is a multi-agent ant simulation I did a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehEzRUu4_RM I also wrote self-synchronizing virtual fireflies and physics simulations.
For a programmer, it's a 3D, multi-user IDE where you can learn new programming techniques in real time with your friends. Yes, people also use it for weird things and porn (unlike the rest of the Internet). But there's quite a lot of genuine art, talent, and learning going on in there as well, and I still think it holds a lot of potential as a medium to teach people to program while "playing a game."
I agree. I've used eventlet, a concurrent networking module for Python made by Linden Lab I believe. It was cool to see how helpful the developers are to answer your questions on IRC. It helped me a lot with my project.
For a programmer, it's a 3D, multi-user IDE where you can learn new programming techniques in real time with your friends. Yes, people also use it for weird things and porn (unlike the rest of the Internet). But there's quite a lot of genuine art, talent, and learning going on in there as well, and I still think it holds a lot of potential as a medium to teach people to program while "playing a game."