Hello science in TAOO [long]

[Dennis Brown]

Xavier,

I have kept quiet about my opinion of TAOO until now.  But with all  
the stuff flying around, I figured I could weigh in without being the  
center of controversy.   I am not a fast typist, so I hope you can  
appreciate my efforts at providing some constructive criticism.

Every time you announce a stack or push TAOO as something to look at  
again, I go to your website and download what you have and try it  
out.  I usually find that my attention is diverted from what you are  
trying to show, instead to bugs that cause it not not function or  
other cosmetic flaws on my OS X system.  I get frustrated after about  
10 minutes and throw whatever it is in the trash and think that I  
will wait until you have it fixed and then look at it.  Only problem  
is that the story never seems to change.

As an example, I downloaded the Science.rev stack.  I noticed that  
the buttons were not sized to look their best on my system, so I went  
about resizing buttons, changing them to square, adjusting positions  
a bit.  Then I started looking at the content.  Noticed that the  
categories were not filled in correctly for some of the entries, so I  
edited them.  Then I tried to click on the hyperlinks in the text and  
noticed that none of them worked.  Then I read and enjoyed some of  
the science articles.  I noted that my DEVONthink Pro program would  
have done a much nicer job of doing the small database example in a  
polished way.  Then I realized that I had spent an hour on this and I  
had no idea what I was supposed to learn about TAOO from it.  Time to  
get back to work...

I am sure that TAOO does something useful for you, but I am not sure  
what that is other than a simple free form database in the example.   
I am certain that I have no idea what advantage I could put it to for  
myself, because I don't understand where it fits in with my needs.

I spent the last 7 months programming with Rev full time on what  
seems like a large project to me, though it is only one stack and one  
card at 3k lines of script and growing smaller as I write more!  I  
threw out my design twice as I learned more about the problem I am  
trying to solve, and how to write effecient and maintainable code.   
During that time I went from "What is the message path?" to  
understanding about half of what is in Rev today.  When I started  
out, I did not even fathom the amount of stuff I did not know about  
Rev.  This is a simple program from a system point of view.  It just  
reads in some data files, writes out some reorganized versions of the  
files, generates simulations and statistics on the data and generates  
tables and complex graphs of the results in an interactive way.  When  
I need to add a new function to my program now, I spend hours  
thinking about the problem I am solving and how it fits into my GUI  
and internal framework, from a philosophical and maintainability  
point of view, then I spend a few minutes adding it, and then hours  
testing it.

The point of this is that I understand what I can and can't do in Rev  
now.  I have a clear picture in my mind about all the internal parts  
and how I can put them together to solve a problem.  It took a lot of  
time and effort on my part to get to this point.  I have also stayed  
current with all the posts on this mailing list to help me understand  
some of the many dark corners, and I have also received help from the  
list posters.  I have attended the tutorial conferences which also  
provided me with at least one new trick each.  Without all these  
support tools I would not know half of what I do now about Rev.

Now the question is, how can you create a demo or tutorial that can  
transmit that picture that you have in your mind to others.  It is  
certain that nobody is going to invest months of time trying to  
figure out if it is useful.  You have to be able to show them its  
utility in less than an hour.  You have to spoon feed the concepts  
painlessly.  Nobody wants to fight you for the table scraps.   
Perhaps, you could generate a tutorial written TAOO that shows how to  
use it to solve a problem that is universal to most programmers and  
that you consider to be an area of strength for TAOO.  Think about  
the wonderful tutorial stacks that others have written to promote  
their products or have provided as a service to the community.

If TAOO is worthwhile for others, the time you spend organizing you  
thoughts and writing the tutorial example will be repaid ten times  
over in the future with praise, collaboration, and improved utility  
of TAOO.  Also don't forget that a picture is worth a thousand words.

If you can't justify the effort to do this, then don't expect the  
future to be any different than the past.

Dennis