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 >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm