marty wrote:
Is it true that most programmers say that hypercard isn't
programming? Do they say that about RR? I'm running into that issue
a little bit.
Some of my students (8th grade and up) think that RR is not a "real"
programming language. Why? It's too easy! They have the notion --
shared by a good portion of the general public -- that programming is
incredibly difficult to do, hard to learn, and mastered only by
geeks. Thus, since making things (even executables) using RR is so
easy, it must not be programming. This viewpoint is especially
expressed by students who have dabbled in other languages, like java.
Yeah, I see that a lot. Rev is in a very difficult position with regard
to its positioning: any programming language will be too hard for most
folks to find attractive, yet Transcript is too easy for some to take it
seriously.
I even see some of this at the end-user level: One of my apps ships to
hospitals, where the IT staff sends me questions about installation.
The hardest part of that conversation is convincing them that it's a
very simple and fully self-contained app, with no complex networking
protocols or DLLs strewn all over the hard drive. Once they try it they
always send me a happy note, but at first they find it hard to believe
such an app can be so simple to install. :)
Back to Rev's positioning, as a proprietary sole-source technology using
a unique object model and language unlike anything else, it's a tough
sell to the largest potential market: folks who already have some
scripting experience in something else.
For most folks, that "something else" is JavaScript, which probably has
more users than all other scripting languages combined.
Rev isn't anything like JavaScript, nor would I suggest that it should
be. But it would be helpful if some of the introductory materials in
the docs discussed Rev as a second language for JavaScripters as it does
for HC and VB.
On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other
teachers to begin making their own software to use with their
classes. But they think it's too hard! (Granted, most of them
haven't really tried it -- they hear words like "programming" or
"writing software" and shy away.)
Judy Perry and I talked about that briefly at RevCon, and I followed up
with Kevin on that afterward.
We all agree that it would be very helpful for educators if there was a
collection of prefab components one could use as starting points for
courseware, but it would be a lot of work for RunRev to take this on and
not optimal for them to do at this time given the other things on their
plate right now.
I'm prepared to devote some space at revJournal.com to such a collection
if I can find someone who has the time to help manage it. I can provide
FTP access, HTML templates, etc., but could really use someone with some
time on their hands to help set it up and maintain it.
I'd be happy to donate some components to such a collection as well, and
if we got a dozen others to do so as well we'd get quite a nice
time-saving set of goodies for teachers.
If any of you may be interested in helping with such an initiative,
whether as the assistance webmaster or contributing components, please
drop me a note offlist and we'll see if we can get that going.
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
_______________________________________________________
Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
[email protected]
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
