Hey Mike,
Thanks for getting back to me :)
> The "training wheels" analogy does not hold. Word and PowerPoint are
> not designed for beginners only. They are powerful document
> preparation tools in their own right.
I guess it depends on what you mean by beginners. When my analogy mentioned
adults sticking to training wheels, it was for a reason.
> My point was that Word and PowerPoint are not "all wrong" nor are
> they "all right".
I believe I agreed with this point.
I said that I say LaTeX is contraindicated for small, uncomplicated
projects that don't have specialised typesetting requirements. I said that
if you want to use Word to write a letter to your grandma, then go ahead.
Please specify which part of these sentiments lacked nuance about the
relative merits of LaTeX and Word.
> Statements that can be perceived as fundamentalist ("all wrong") or
> patronising ("training wheels") when promoting one tool over another does
> no favours and can be counter-productive.
I can see how it could appear so.
On the other hand, it can also end up being productive, if it makes people
re-evaluate what they previously took for granted, and they realise they
don't need to be trapped by training wheels foisted upon them by training
wheels manufacturers who ensure that training wheels appear in every K-13
classroom.
People can think it is patronising if they want.
Children also complain when medicine is bitter instead of tasting like
lollies.
> As an example, I've seen attendees at a workshop ask if they can hold
> Word docs under Git and, when told, "ideally you'd use plain-text
> documents to get the most benefit", switch off entirely as their
> community used Word, but when told "of course, you can put Word docs
> under Git", and having been shown this (including how to do a simple
> conflict resolution), brighten up again.
I'm not sure what part of "ideally you'd use plain text" conflicts with
"okay you don't have to use plain text".
Ideally, breakfast cereal should be served with milk. However, if you don't
like milk, you are still permitted to eat breakfast cereal without milk.
If someone is attending a Git workshop because they really want to learn
about Git, they won't care about the plain text stuff. If someone is
attending a Git workshop because Git is a fad and they feel entitled to
have Git to work by magic with all other computational things ever, they
have been misinformed.
I aspire to always make it clear in advance that Git is not your h4xx0rz
Dropbox for n00bz. In this way, I hope that people trying to learn Git from
me really care about what they're learning.
If I'm to disappoint them, I can at least say I've been honest about
disappointing them in advance, instead of hyping up a tool that is clearly
not suited to their needs.
> I'd rather people be taught to appreciate and be aware of the strengths
> and weaknesses of all the tools they use, and, as Jan mentions, the
> technical debts they could incur.
I agree :)
> This includes the tools currently used by SWC (which, in future, people
> may wonder why we ever used some of them - a colleague recently railed
> against using a closed source platform like GitHub, for example)
So don't use GitHub.
Git has near universal validity. Anyone who has access to zlib compression
and SHA1 hashing can reimplement Git from scratch with no concern for
GitHub. It actually isn't that hard [1].
In fact, most of the things I do with Git have nothing to do with GitHub,
BitBucket or any other hosting company. Any Unix machine I have access to
ends up receiving a clone of any Git repo that I'm currently interested in.
I haven't done the stats, but I'd estimate that 50% of the stuff I have
stored in Git repos only exist on private servers where I have SSH access.
Thus, your concerns about universality are simultaneously justified and not
justified.
Kind regards,
Tim
[1] https://github.com/cryptarch/sgit.git
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