Is RR too easy? RevCode

[David Brooks]

> 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 know better than to post this.  Really, I do.

I left the last RunRev conference excited about the possibility of  
teaching RunRev. The new plug-in possibilities make this just too  
attractive to pass up. Since I don't normally teach this, it meant  
adding to my load -- something tenured faculty just don't do unless  
they are "on a mission."

I needed to describe the course, and I've chosen to use a term  
introduced to me at Las Vegas by Paul Looney -- RevCode. So, I'm  
teaching RevCode.  Now, some of you might think this is Revolution,  
and others transcript, and still others hypertalk-on-steroids. I'm  
calling it RevCode.

In order for the "case" to be made, well, I'd just have to take more  
from Paul's justification than a good academic should. In our world of  
sound bytes where "script" is bad and "code" is good, why not RevCode?

Best,

Dave B.