Rev Media and the product line gap

[Dan Shafer]

Francis.....

You make an important point. A professional programmer can *also* be an
Inventive User. And in fact that changes with time and perhaps place and
certainly with conditions. One of the brightest Smalltalk programmers I ever
worked with absolutely *loved* HyperCard and HyperTalk. He'd code in
Smalltalk by day for pay and clients and at night he'd furtively bring out
his 512K Mac (tells you how long ago *that* was) and just smile away the
hours of coding. (Yeah, I know HC probably shouldn't have run on  his 512K
Mac. He was an engineer, what can I say?)

Other comments intertwingled below.

On 4/1/06, Francis Nugent Dixon <effendi at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> Dan,
>
> I love that term "Inventive User". However, I find that this puts me
> in quite a pickle. Into which category do I fall ?


Whatever category you like. :-)

I wrote programs in :
>
> Basic (didn't like it)


You neither, eh?

  I looked at a C manual, and closed the book,


I told my agent repeatedly as he'd offer me contract after contract to write
C primers, "I hope to go to my grave able ot say I never wrote a single line
of code in C." So far, so good.

So maybe I was a professional programmer.


I'd say so.

In the early 1980's (when was it exactly ?), I bought my Mac 128K
> as my first home computer, found Hypercard and ..... I think I became
> an Inventive User (did I regress ?)


MISCONCPETION ALERT! An Inventive User isn't "less than" or somehow a step
back from professional programming. It's just a different life. Professional
programmers  *have* to program; Inventive Users  love  programming (more
likely scripting) and don't have to do it.

I used Hypercard (and now Revolution), but to solve MY problems,
> rather than someone elses. Is THAT part of the definition of "Inventive
> User" ?


Quintessentially so.


> Is  "Having Fun"  ALSO  part of the definition of an Inventive User ?


Absolutely essential.


> Which leaves us with the question "Is Revolution for Fun or for
> Business ?


Yes. It's not an either-or, it's a both-and and that's its beauty. The
question  isn't what you can use it for, the question we keep running into
is, given RR's limited marketing resources, where's the "sweet spot' in the
market that they should target with their product line and with advertising
and promotion? I'm on the Inventive User side of that argument but, like
you, I DON'T HAVE A REAL VOTE. And that's as it should be. Those with skin
in the game should make the decisions. It's just fun to kibitz.




--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
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