Documentation & Books & related

[Richard Gaskin]

Marian Petrides wrote:
> Think of the things someone just starting out will need to know and give 
> them to him in "words of one phoneme." It is very difficult for someone 
> who "speaks the language" to remember what it was like when they 
> couldn't.

I remember having that experience with the allmighty HyperCard.

In 1987 I was learning to script and wanted to have a button that 
creates a field.  After searching through the docs and both of Goodman's 
books I was certain it couldn't be done.

I was just about to decide that I was going to have to work with a 
pre-made set of fields when I accidentally stumbled across the answer 
while looking up something else.

If that happened to me I imagine it happens to many people.  But I 
wonder how many didn't stick with it long enough to find the answer.

And consider that was with the relatively tiny sandbox that was 
HyperCard:  one OS, one window, one color, half as many objects as Rev, 
half as many messages, a third or fewer properties....

Maybe the more productive solution for cases like that would be to 
recognize that if it takes 30 days to adequately evaluate most consumer 
apps it will take longer to evaluate a multi-platform development tool.

Yes, invest in the docs.  But also up the eval period.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more:  http://www.fourthworld.com/rev