For true beginners

Ken Ray kray at sonsothunder.com
Sat Aug 9 16:53:01 EDT 2003


Ken,

I think your suggestions are wonderful, and would fill a gap that is in
real need. In fact the whole issue of "getting started in Rev" needs
some work, IMHO. Sample stacks are good and will help new users get
going. I remember developing a couple of stacks for SuperCard that
helped people understand how to build menus and work with different
kinds of buttons that could be done again (this no longer ships with SC,
much to my dismay). Additionally, I think there needs to be more
guidance when the program runs for the first time; a wizard that asks
the user what programming they've done and carefully guides them to the
information they need to adapt to Rev. I know a lot of this info is
already in the online docs; it's just not "right there" and
"hand-holding"-enough, IMHO.

So I think your idea has tremendous merit.

Oh, and BTW, if someone things they can build an HC-type tool in the
.NET framework that is "simple and elegant", I'd be very surprised. ;-)

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: use-revolution-admin at lists.runrev.com 
> [mailto:use-revolution-admin at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf Of Ken Norris
> Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2003 12:14 PM
> To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Subject: For true beginners
> 
> 
> Hello list,
> 
> Over on the HC list (yes, it's still quite alive, but the 
> activity has dwindled to a handful of members) there has been 
> some discussion about yet another HC clone. The thread 
> starter is a programmer who was talking about building yet 
> another HC-type tool for MS' .NET framework, which I confess 
> I know nothing about, something 'simple and elegent' (his words).
> 
> Of course, I directed him to Rev, but he said he thought it 
> was geared to the professional programming market and 
> therefore too complex and daunting for many people to bother 
> with, doesn't fit the criteria of 'simple and elegent'.
> 
> I know exactly what he means. I miss HC's straightforward 
> GUI, and even the 'canned' stacks and scripts to modify. 
> These are precisely the reasons that father HC gained its 
> popularity among early Mac users and spawned what we now see 
> here. If I was looking at learning to write simple programs 
> for my own use, or if I was young student wanting to 
> experiment with programming solutions and school projects, or 
> if I was a grade school teacher needing to relieve some 
> pressures, or a retiree looking for an interesting hobby, or 
> aspirations for a small business where I needed options for 
> its peculiarities, or...well, you get it, yes? Would Rev be a 
> viable option? Maybe not, the way it appears right now.
> 
> So, in order to get new beginners truly interested in this 
> venue, I was thinking there should be a set of well written, 
> simple, ready-to-use, useful, and modifiable stacks, and also 
> puposefully geared to breaking them down to analyze 
> step-by-step, and modifying them, all done within the Free 
> Edition. Things like a phone dialer, an MP3 playlist, a graph 
> maker, a set of stack templates, etc.
> 
> I'd be really interested in list feedback on this subject.
> 
> Yours truly,
> Ken N.
> 
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