Rant Re Rev Documentation

Judy Perry jperryl at ecs.fullerton.edu
Mon Jul 25 01:23:43 EDT 2005


Ummmm, but the problem is that HC shipped with pre-builts, little things
like buttons that did things ordinary users might want to do, and hence
could just copy-paste them into their own work.  Ditto with fields.  Ditto
with other thingies like what to do with QT.  And sample, real, working
applications/stacks.  Oh, and, of course, at some point at least, a manual
WITH AN INDEX!  (contact me off-list if you need an explanation  of WHY
this is IMPORTANT).

Rev has no such beasts.

And, before all the veteran programmers jump on my back for not jumping on
the "programming is hard" bandwagon (it apparently requires oodles and
oodles of time, even for a language like Transcript, just so you can
figure out how to do a simple thing like an interactive slideshow), we
should note that the ACM literature is, well, littered, with research
showing that newbie/novice programmers benefit from having such
'manipulatives' as working code fragments that can be tried and fiddled
with to learn programming concepts.

Even Dan, for all his effort, still talks about the Hypercard model and
the 'seductive' factor for what I think he calls the 'inventive user' (my
apologies to Dan if I have gotten this wrong).

But, you know, even inventive users will only go searching just so
far...and Dan's book, ... the conference stacks, ... the online docs, ...
RevOnline ... etc. etc.  : = This is all too confusing.

IF Rev is to move beyond the 'low-hanging fruit' of the HC abandonment and
the very inventive 'inventive user' of the programming crowd, I, for one,
think a few things need to be realized and dealt with:

(1) the IDE:  for DC, at least, it's too complex, non-intuitive, has no
learning guide, and needs to be reinvented WITH A MANUAL/EXPLANATION OF
HOW TO USE IT.

(2) again, for the DC crowd, but maybe even beyond, THERE NEEDS TO BE AN
IN-THE-BOX SET OF PRE-PROGRAMMED WIDGETS.  Pre-programmed little buttons,
fields, what-have-you's, that already do the sorts of things people ask
how to do all the time on list (even those who are self-described as
'veteral programmers':  HOW TO  SCRIPT TABS comes readily to mind here).
For god's sake, even the entirely non-intuitive Director had such
pre-builts as, what were they called, behaviors?!

(3) for the DC crowd, especially, there needs to be something ala the
scripting conferences, but oriented towards HOW TO DO THIS THING, XYZ.  As
opposed to 'how to learn to program in 6 short months.  Normal humans do
NOT NOT NOT!!! want to learn how to program.  They want to learn how to
do/make things.  A subtle yet important distinction.

Enough for a night after a day at the beach...

Judy


On Mon, 25 Jul
2005, Sarah Reichelt wrote:

> Hi Tim,
>
> I understand what you are saying but I'm not sure I agree with your
> idea of the what the docs are for. I see them as a reference guide,
> not a tutorial. For learning Revolution, you need other resources:
> the built-in tutorials, the scripting conference stacks, Dan's book,
> this list and the other resources available on the net.




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