Trying to use the metaphor

Troy Rollins troy at rpsystems.net
Fri Jun 18 14:27:03 EDT 2004


On Jun 18, 2004, at 1:50 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> There is some frustration involved with learning any programming 
> environment, and Rev is full-featured and comprehensive enough to have 
> a learning curve.

True enough. But I think some will admit that the curve is actually 
steeper for those versed in "traditional" (dot syntax, OOP) languages - 
because it involves a LOT of "unlearning." The concepts and logic are 
the same in pretty much all programming, but the syntax is not, and in 
fact, while "plain English" it can come off as completely alien to 
those who don't consider programming to be an exercise in English, but 
one of logic. I, for one, get tripped-up more moving from say Lingo (in 
dot syntax form) to Revolution, than I do from Lingo to RealBasic, or 
Flash, or QT Script, or any other dot syntax language. I can't tell you 
how many times I've types "myVar =" to start setting the value of a 
variable. This is not the kind of thing even someone _completely_ new 
to programming would do, simply because they would only know the syntax 
as defined by Rev. Similarly for those coming from other "Card script" 
languages.

My point is I know _how_ to program, and sometimes, Rev makes me wish I 
didn't - because it can actually work against you.  ;-)

Anyhow, I appreciate the clarification on the delete function. That one 
is noted. I'll be interested to see what the next thing I think will be 
easy will actually be confounding.

On the other hand, last night I replaced a 20 line repeat loop with 4 
words - "filter myVar with tFilterString".

And _that_ is why I'm willing to relearn and accept the metaphor... 
again.

--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net



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