(no subject)

[Richmond Mathewson]

Mark Schonewille wrote:

"I think  
there are more people on this list who have already invented their own  
systems to save preferecnes, make installers, get the versioning right  
etc.

I don't expect RunRev Ltd to create a general-purpose solution for  
each of the issues in your list, because everybody will need something  
slightly different. We will probably all end up creating our own  
systems anyway."

Now what I am going to write will be, I hope, contentious and stimulate
a lot of CONSTRUCTIVE comment:

I don't like being spoon-fed, and have spent my life in Education
trying to wean both kids and adult learners off a dependency on
spoon-feeding. I believe that when we were made/born we came with
reasonably efficient brains - and those brains are to be used.

What I like about Runtime Revolution consists of both its capabilities
and what it does not offer prepackaged; or, let me draw a parallel with
English (a language, as a Scot, I have made my living from for many years);
RR supplies the grammar, the syntax and the vocabulary; but, thank God, 
it does not supply the sentences; that is to say, it allows us an awful
lot of freedom. This has been demonstrated time and time again on this Use-List, where many people have come up with many solutions to a single
problem - this is fantastic. I, for one, have never had an urge to live
in a totalitarian state (especially as I live and work in a country that used to be a totalitarian state, and is still, 20 years later, suffering, considerably, from the psychological aftermath), in fact one of the reasons
I like life in Bulgaria rather than Scotland is that society is not becoming increasingly rule-bound. Nobody can accuse Runtime Revolution of being
rule-bound! And, ultimately it is psychologically healthier for us to
retrace parts of inventing the wheel (hence the collection of slide-rules down in my school, which I force on my pupils for 1 day a year).

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson.

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A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
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