That said... if someone wants to put together a gloomy (or downtempo) promo
for J?

We could use, those, also.

Thanks,

-- 
Raul



On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com> wrote:

> That's certainly one way of looking at it.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_(marketing) might be another
> way of looking at this.
>
> Look... if *all* you show is your product - no background, no context, no
> fun, then you might be quite successful at preaching to the choir (that
> would be us). But that should not be your target audience for a promotional
> video.
>
> Actually, thinking in terms of "target audiences" sort of misses the point.
>
> One point is that you do not know who your target audience is. That is up
> to your audience to decide. So you need to have a certain amount of respect
> for them. Some of the audience for your promotional video might hate J, and
> might just want to make fun of it. But if they are entertained by the video
> they might pass it on as a reference to their friends. Enough of this and
> you are going to reach people that would otherwise have never heard about
> the language. And some of them will be interested.
>
> Meanwhile, that interest is not going to blossom, full strength, just from
> watching a video. But having some familiarity with the language makes
> allows people to get used to the ideas and - later on, when they see
> mention of the language in other contexts - they can be a little more
> comfortable with it. Even if they originally decided it was wrong for them,
> at that time, people change their minds and sometimes people want to try
> things out.
>
> Now... with computing... a lot of the decisions about computing activities
> are "fad based". People make recommendations and other people follow
> systems of thought that [from a distance] seem completely arbitrary. So we
> might get hit by that at some point, if we have enough good things to show
> and if enough people know about what we can do. That will cause problems
> for us, especially if we don't have enough good solid people to absorb the
> shocks, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
>
> Anyways, my point is: if you want to put together a good J promotional
> video with no distractions, I think you should go ahead and do that.
> There's nothing stopping you, and we do need more awareness of what can be
> done with J.
>
> But that does not mean we need to be scared of other attempts which also
> attempt to entertain. If someone finds the sound track to be too much of a
> distraction, they can turn off the sound. If they simply do not like the
> video, they will go watch something else instead. But at this point our
> audience size is so small that I'm honestly not worried too much about
> being "too entertaining" or "too distracting".
>
> When you come right down to it, J is a programming *language*. Most people
> do not learn languages (programming or otherwise) purely for the joy of the
> language itself. They learn because of the people they want to exchange
> ideas with, because of the works they gain access to, because of the
> characteristics of those people and ideas.
>
> When you look out at other programming languages, are you going to want to
> learn a language because of some bit of code written in the language?
> Maybe? Or are you going to want to learn the language because people you
> respect express joy about using the language?
>
> Honestly? I can't answer how you would choose.
>
> But it bothers me to see us tearing down someone's work because it's "too
> upbeat". Actually, that bothers me a lot.
>
> We have a lot to be critical of, in our community. We have various bugs
> and problems that really need to be fixed. We have an arcane syntax which -
> if you put in the effort - is an incredibly powerful tool. But if we become
> popular you know that there will be people who just stare at it in
> bafflement and don't really see what's so good about it. They'll want to be
> using it for reasons they do not particularly understand and many of them
> will not have the years it takes to become fluent in the language.
>
> But that's nothing compared to the problems that people have just getting
> started. The problems of the depth of the language are balanced by the fact
> that for most applications you only need to use a small fraction of the
> language's power. And the rest can be sitting there, waiting for people to
> use *IF* it's acceptable to use it in the first place.
>
> Right now, J is acceptable to use in limited contexts. But we do not have
> much appeal to the sort of person that wants "distractions" (also known as:
> the sort of person who has other interests - perhaps things like food,
> sleep and/or music - believe it or not, I have heard that there are
> actually people who like the stuff).
>
> Anyways, I guess I'm saying that we have plenty of room for improvement
> but I feel like our community is still too small for this kind of harsh
> self criticism. Let's save that for the things that we really lack, ok?
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Raul
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Murray Eisenberg 
> <mur...@math.umass.edu>wrote:
>
>> Distractions are probably good in a promotional video only to the extent
>> that one wishes to divert attention from the product being promoted.
>>
>> Certainly relevant music can add to the impact of a presentation by
>> suggesting a mood, etc. But adding _irrelevant_ music is pointless.
>>
>> On Fri, 7 Mar 2014 19:45:47 -050, Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Distractions are probably good, to a certain extent, in a promotional
>> > video. Not everyone that watches the video is going to want to take
>> action
>> > immediately and start solving euler or investing in stocks or whatever
>> > else. Ideally, a promotional video should be fun enough that it can find
>> > its way through casually interested people to the seriously interested
>> > types. And, ideally, there will be enough information present that the
>> > serious types can find more (but that can go in the comments section).
>> >
>> > Of course, nothing is ever completely ideal.
>> >
>> > The 15 minute video is long enough that a set of "skip to topic" links
>> > would probably be nice. That way people in a hurry can take a look and
>> see
>> > if they want to watch something else instead.
>> >
>> > If people want to study, they should probably hit some of the existing
>> > documentation?
>> >
>> > For a promotional video we should instead, I think, focus more on
>> issues of
>> > appeal than issues of satisfaction.
>> >
>> > But of course, there's plenty of space on youtube for satisfaction based
>> > videos, also.
>> >
>> > On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Murray Eisenberg <mur...@math.umass.edu
>> >wrote:
>> >
>> >> A comment on Roger's comment as well as some comments on other aspects
>> of
>> >> the video.
>> >>
>> >> (1) In fact, I find the sound background not just superfluous, but
>> >> distracting. (Yes, I know that's why we have a mute function on our
>> >> computers' sound controls.)
>> >>
>> >> (2) The background globe graphic is a bit distracting, too. Clearly
>> _some_
>> >> kind of background was needed for the horizontal scrolling banners;
>> perhaps
>> >> just a plain background or a simple color gradient would be better. (I
>> find
>> >> such irrelevant backgrounds akin to the sort of "chart junk" that Tufte
>> >> inveighs against.)
>> >>
>>
>> ——
>> Murray Eisenberg                                mur...@math.umass.edu
>> Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
>> Lederle Graduate Research Tower      phone 240 246-7240 (H)
>> University of Massachusetts
>> 710 North Pleasant Street
>> Amherst, MA 01003-9305
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>
>
>
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