Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?

[Richard Gaskin]

marty wrote:
> Is it true that most programmers say that hypercard isn't  
> programming?  Do they say that about RR?  I'm running into that issue  
> a little bit.
> 
> Some of my students (8th grade and up) think that RR is not a "real"  
> programming language.  Why?  It's too easy!  They have the notion --  
> shared by a good portion of the general public -- that programming is  
> incredibly difficult to do, hard to learn, and mastered only by  
> geeks.  Thus, since making things (even executables) using RR is so  
> easy, it must not be programming.  This viewpoint is especially  
> expressed by students who have dabbled in other languages, like java.

Yeah, I see that a lot.  Rev is in a very difficult position with regard 
to its positioning:  any programming language will be too hard for most 
folks to find attractive, yet Transcript is too easy for some to take it 
seriously.

I even see some of this at the end-user level:  One of my apps ships to 
hospitals, where the IT staff sends me questions about installation. 
The hardest part of that conversation is convincing them that it's a 
very simple and fully self-contained app, with no complex networking 
protocols or DLLs strewn all over the hard drive.  Once they try it they 
always send me a happy note, but at first they find it hard to believe 
such an app can be so simple to install. :)

Back to Rev's positioning, as a proprietary sole-source technology using 
a unique object model and language unlike anything else, it's a tough 
sell to the largest potential market:  folks who already have some 
scripting experience in something else.

For most folks, that "something else" is JavaScript, which probably has 
more users than all other scripting languages combined.

Rev isn't anything like JavaScript, nor would I suggest that it should 
be.  But it would be helpful if some of the introductory materials in 
the docs discussed Rev as a second language for JavaScripters as it does 
for HC and VB.


> On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other  
> teachers to begin making their own software to use with their  
> classes.  But they think it's too hard!  (Granted, most of them  
> haven't really tried it -- they hear words like "programming" or  
> "writing software" and shy away.)

Judy Perry and I talked about that briefly at RevCon, and I followed up 
with Kevin on that afterward.

We all agree that it would be very helpful for educators if there was a 
collection of prefab components one could use as starting points for 
courseware, but it would be a lot of work for RunRev to take this on and 
not optimal for them to do at this time given the other things on their 
plate right now.

I'm prepared to devote some space at revJournal.com to such a collection 
if I can find someone who has the time to help manage it.  I can provide 
FTP access, HTML templates, etc., but could really use someone with some 
time on their hands to help set it up and maintain it.

I'd be happy to donate some components to such a collection as well, and 
if we got a dozen others to do so as well we'd get quite a nice 
time-saving set of goodies for teachers.

If any of you may be interested in helping with such an initiative, 
whether as the assistance webmaster or contributing components, please 
drop me a note offlist and we'll see if we can get that going.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
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  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com