On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 08:39, Mathieu Bouchard <ma...@artengine.ca> wrote:
> Le 2012-03-09 à 19:58:00, András Murányi a écrit : > > Then they have a certain "high end", the more advanced topics within - >> e.g. dynamic patching for me, or libPd according to Julian. Now, someone >> can fear that the focus of developments could move towards the "high end", >> leaving simple folks increasingly frustrated. >> > > Many projects are driven by the high-end. It's necessary. They're also > driven by the high-end. Many low-end features start existing because > high-end features first allowed them to exist. If someone makes an > easy-to-use polyphonic synth, this synth might be using dynamic-patching > features, perhaps new ones or new ways of using the old ones. This needs > high-end development. In projects like Pd, development has always to be > multi-focus. > > It isn't just that. Even in the case of unrelated features, high-end > features are what keeps the high-end users around, and they're the ones who > write externals and abstractions, both for themselves and for others. > Low-end users don't produce nearly as much low-end abstractions and > externals as high-end users do. > > It's that the very ability to figure out what should go in a given > abstr/extern, and what should be left out, and all the strategies of how to > specify args, etc., those are all skills that are characteristics of > high-end users. Every such skill moves you towards the higher-end. > > At some point I had to realise that I couldn't just ask students to make > abstractions... I mean that I couldn't just teach them the mechanics of $1 > arguments and $0-foo local variables. They still haven't thought about how > to figure out which ideas should become abstractions and which shouldn't, > etc. ; they'd need something of the order of « Introduction to > programming », perhaps several semesters, but I remember that in > university, after the 4th such course, students only began to figure out > what could be a good library vs a bad one. So, definitely, Pd users who > didn't go through the equivalent of those courses (or of some other related > courses) rarely would publish a library that other people would want to > use. So, it's important that high-end users keep on making low-end > components. > > It's also that everybody needs to use some of those « low-end > components »... there are lots of things common to all users. And even > though high-end users can more easily tolerate design problems and bugs and > various difficulties, they don't necessarily like them. > I agree. And NB when I advocate the low-end, I'm by no means against the high-end. The high-end is the avant-garde, so to say. It's not an either-or game. > I don't share, but I think I can understand that fear, and my point was >> that Pd shall keep the "low end" accessible and up-to-date. >> > > Actually, I wonder which features you have in mind when you say that. > Hmm. Definitely the GUI comes to my mind first, the put menu-bar, autocompletion, search, zooming, the magic glass - these all make it more accessible and "user friendly". I guess, beginners and amateurs (like me) need these more than experts do. > > Yea, this is what we call in our wonderfully expressive Hungarian >> language "szőrszálhasogatás" :o) >> > > What I mean about that, is that for making your point, saying full-time > isn't simply a small exaggeration. Otherwise, I don't think I'd have made a > fuss. > > My original wording was "professional". Professional, full-time, or high-end, all different essays to verbalize my fuzzy idea. András
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