Genevieve Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > So, behaviors are not good instructional tools, we would be better off > writing our own lingo code?
Hi Genevieve, I thoroughly recommend that you write your own code. The built-in behaviors have both their strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: + You can use behaviors to add powerful functionality to your project without needing to have any knowledge of programming + You can test the different behaviors to get a feeling of what Lingo can offer + You can build a prototype interface in next to no time, just to test an idea + You can find reliable handlers and other useful snippets of code that you can repurpose for your own scripts Weaknesses: - The built-in behaviors are the TV dinners of the Lingo world. They are written to cater for a wide variety of tastes, and include both bulky packaging and doubtful ingredients designed to improve shelf-life. - Behaviors are great for single-sprite features, and they can cope with homogenous multi-sprite features such as radio buttons. As soon as you start trying to use behaviors to control several sprites with different purposes, there are other more elegant solutions. (The Custom Scroll Bar behavior is either a brilliant example or a terrible warning). - If you rely on the built-in behaviors for all your code, you limit your horizons Code needs to be written in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes. The code in the Behavior Library needs to be (in order of priority): Reusable Robust Easy to understand Code for instructional purposes needs to be (in order of priority): Easy to understand Easy to understand Easy to understand The code that you will be writing for yourself (at all stages in your career) will include deliberate mistakes that you will then spend many happy hours correcting. There is no better way to learn than by correcting your own mistakes. Cheers, James [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/LUJ/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
