Documentation & Books+sorry!+conlcusion (?OT)

Wolfgang M.Bereuter wmb at internettrainer.com
Sun Jul 11 07:41:33 EDT 2004


On 03.07.2004, at 21:56, Judy Perry wrote:

> Novice programmers can't be expected to 'dig for diamonds' because they
> (a) don't know how to dig, (b) don't know what to dig with or for, and 
> (c)
> don't know how to ask relevant questions.
>
One of so many great postings about this theme!

List,
sorry for my delay, i had a terrible crash here and maybee lost some 
mail documents of one or two days. Unfortunatly these 2 examples I 
promised, based on the thema whats an array? too. A "thing" I saw often 
but still dont understand since... My english dictionary ist still not 
reactivated ;(

The reaction to my posting surprised me, The crash and other priorities 
stopped me for some days.. Sorry.

Sorry agin that I have to "reply" some posts from my memory, because 
the last mails are lost and I havnt time to search all the pipermail...

  Judys,
Thanks to your postings, I really loved what you said about this theme; 
its nearly exactly as I see it.

A posting said (paraphrased): rev has no real target market. Its to 
difficult for real beginners and not "pure" enough for the real 
hardcoder or C++, Java freaks...
Agree with that why?
Let me do a small step to "my" rev history-

I was "evangelising" rev here in Austria, wehen I found it some years 
ago as a GUI for the great Idea (crossplatform-engine!!!) Metacard. I 
hoped that rev will go in the direction of a real kind of different 
GUI´s based on the underlaying crassplatforom egine. Also a 
crossplatfrom tool for the rest of us (no coder). But I have lost all 
my hopes that this will happen once.

What do I mean with this?
Splitting the existing UIS in 3 Kinds of "distributions":
1 A puristic UI for MC User as it was in MC, with his documentation
2 A kind of Xtalk/HC/Direktor, RB Alternative, with his documentation
3 A kind of real beginners simple GUI, with his documentations. Like a 
simple iShell/mtropolis to get strongly in to education/beginners 
market. (That would have been mine, and I was ready to collaborate)

I hear you saying now: RR is A small company - cant pay that 
development costs!
WRONG!!
The have chages to M$ policy wihtout beeing M$. Therefore I think the 
have wasted a lot more money in a sophisticated Licencing systems 
(against the grea MC crossplatform idea) changing the distribution 
policy many times, cancelling the starter kit and so on... With one 
word: a real professional tool. But for what market? As this post said 
omho correctly: professional developer are not interested in that. Or 
has anybody seen here hundreds of them? Should be thousands in so many 
years or not?

ad 1: The MC UI is still here and a lot of great formelry MC 
developers, have their own "extended" MC UI, plug ins etc. I know that 
one from Klaus Mayor, he helped me a lot with the troubles I had with 
rev and I would like to say him here also: thanks a lot Klaus!!  I 
think it would be a pleasure for the most of them to collaborate 
building a pure rev UI.

ad 2 the rev´s GUI. As ist is, as a semi/and/professional tool with 
SQL/Oracle and all that features.

ad 3 the simple iShell-like UI. I have discussed a lot of times here, 
mostly with Richard Gaskin and others too. BUt the praising rev chorus 
taped allways all this ideas. Also offered many times my (free) 
collaboration. The reaction was about that: If you can pay me a 2 or 3 
month my costs I can do that... But I should still pay the license and 
invest my free time (more that the free time)...

(Today I asked myself, why should I now again help RR, after some 
personal disappontmens what happend to me with one of the RR team, 
without getting paid?) If anybody can give me a strong argument please 
tell me.

Back to left right brain dox- discussion.
There have been 2 very interesting posts about "whats an Array?". About 
arrays I m in the situation of any learner (see Judys at the top).

This following example shows exactly the difference:
 From Richard and from Marian.
Richard´s Array description: My impression (feelings): a professional 
description, but I did not understand it!
Marian´s Array description: A (maybee for a scripter not so 
professional description) but I understood it in a few seconds.

Whats the big difference?
Richards description rememberd me the style the rev dox are written: 
 From an Insider for an Insider! Based on example scripts, their 
structure I dont understand (coder termini), because I dont know the 
elements of it. What is a rev/xtalk word, what part is the variable, he 
has declaired, but I could name different etc... If I do not understand 
the "parts" of this example script how can I understand the whole 
thing? Therefore I cant use it. And can not understand some different 
alternativ ways, he is professionally describing too. -> (frustrating) 
The kids would go away...

Marians description, based on a spreadsheet-metapher a thing I 
know(!!), made a clear and crisp Imagin(ation) in my head what an array 
is. (An Image says more...) After understanding the content of an 
example you can remember and you can start with try and error and maybe 
with some good examples, finally to reproduce your own first array.
And there was a great addition from Mark?? how you can write it in 
another way: (Like Monday, wendsday, friday seperated by commas). That 
explained itself without any words whats the difference in scripting. 
That gives everbody a faster and better understanding. Slowly I got a 
first overview. Hence I decidied to make my examples based on this 
sophisticated programming element (Array). (Maybee I did not understand 
all in a few minutes, but much more than in years of reading about it 
here on the list). If I can recover the latest files of my HD I will 
put them online later.

The reason why most of good programmers cant write good instructions, 
or good scientists are so often bad teachers is that they can not go 
into the mind of a learner and understand that the learner knows 
nothing about the theme he knows so much...

Let me finally say some words to the dox: Jeanny did a great job making 
the best of a kind of catastrophic Ur-documentation. But imho she has 
got a kind of Tantalus job with that. Dan, as I have looked once at 
examples of his book, did a real great job to make a better 
documentation. And I think (IMHO) he could maybe solve this 
Interface/documentation problem.

There have been a lot of others great postings. Especially one, which 
asked the principal question: Does rev need another documentation or 
another UI?
I htink both;)

thanks again for you interest

regards
Wolfgang M. Bereuter

Trainingsmaps© -- that´s speadlearning mindmaps..!
INTERNETTRAINER Wolfgang M. Bereuter
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