[OT] Why 10 hours for a newbie and 30 days for a "programmer"

[Judy Perry]

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, j wrote:

> I'll wager Microsoft has made a nice chunk of cash
> selling Word licenses to pretty much every school in the Western world.

--But, it wasn't always so easy.  WordPerfect had a near lockjawed grip on
the education market as it was the preferred choice for PCs into the '90s
(at least at my university).
 >
> Education folks interested in development tend to be nerds, no doubt
> about it.  As such, we are often up on the latest, "coolest" Open
> Source project and willing to invest the time required to learning such
> tools--which typically have a very steep learning curve, as well.
> Nerds love this, I might add.  :D

--Or, not.  Or they tend to be "let's use what 'everybody' is using" kinds
of folks.  And, so, folks who have absolutely no business using Director
and probably will never ever likely do so again are forced to use it in
instructional design degree programs instead of something as easy to
learn, cross-platform, and relatively inexpensive as Revolution :( .

> What the education market (I am thinking primarily of K-12 here) sorely
> needs, however, is an easy to learn, easy to use, GUI-based RAD tool to
> teach the fundamentals of computer use, programming, design, interface,
> and logic.  No one has this market cornered.  And there *is* a market.

--Ummm, you mean, like Revolution?