Why 10 hours for a newbie and 30 days for a "programmer"

[j]

On Sep 2, 2004, at 10:59 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> A company buys one tool, not millions of chips.

A company buys a million licenses for each tool.


> I think this part of the discussion is being largely driven by people 
> in the education marketplace. And I respect their right to their 
> opinions in the spaces they know. But overall, that market is 
> minuscule and all but insignificant to software development tool 
> companies for a whole host of reasons.

To my knowledge, no xCard was ever adopted by Microsoft for software 
development.  In fact, the number of reputable, established companies 
using any xCard to develop software is "miniscule and all but 
insignificant."  Education is the largest market Rev—or HyperCard, 
etc.—will ever serve and hope to make large inroads.

There are a whole host of reasons for this.  Exactly *because* xCards 
are not established in higher education markets, xCards are not seen as 
professional development tools and, therefore, will lose to the tools 
being promoted in higher ed every time: C, Java, etc.  This is unlikely 
to change.  HyperCard was released more than 15 years ago.  If higher 
ed and "industry" software developers haven't seen the benefits by now, 
they aren't going to.

Additionally, I'm sorry Dan, but K–12 is a *gigantic* marketplace, 
worldwide.  Do McGraw-Hill look like they are going out of business any 
time soon?  Add to this the fact that there is currently NO education 
"industry standard" for teaching students to program, yet the emphasis 
on student computer literacy is higher than ever.  The company that 
corners this market is going to walk away filthy rich.

To win this market, however, Rev needs to win over the people who make 
the decision to buy education licenses: teachers, administrators, 
students, and parents.  By and large, these people don't spend money 
without lots of investigation.  More than 10 hours, for instance.

J.