Francis..... You make an important point. A professional programmer can *also* be an Inventive User. And in fact that changes with time and perhaps place and certainly with conditions. One of the brightest Smalltalk programmers I ever worked with absolutely *loved* HyperCard and HyperTalk. He'd code in Smalltalk by day for pay and clients and at night he'd furtively bring out his 512K Mac (tells you how long ago *that* was) and just smile away the hours of coding. (Yeah, I know HC probably shouldn't have run on his 512K Mac. He was an engineer, what can I say?)
Other comments intertwingled below. On 4/1/06, Francis Nugent Dixon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Dan, > > I love that term "Inventive User". However, I find that this puts me > in quite a pickle. Into which category do I fall ? Whatever category you like. :-) I wrote programs in : > > Basic (didn't like it) You neither, eh? I looked at a C manual, and closed the book, I told my agent repeatedly as he'd offer me contract after contract to write C primers, "I hope to go to my grave able ot say I never wrote a single line of code in C." So far, so good. So maybe I was a professional programmer. I'd say so. In the early 1980's (when was it exactly ?), I bought my Mac 128K > as my first home computer, found Hypercard and ..... I think I became > an Inventive User (did I regress ?) MISCONCPETION ALERT! An Inventive User isn't "less than" or somehow a step back from professional programming. It's just a different life. Professional programmers *have* to program; Inventive Users love programming (more likely scripting) and don't have to do it. I used Hypercard (and now Revolution), but to solve MY problems, > rather than someone elses. Is THAT part of the definition of "Inventive > User" ? Quintessentially so. > Is "Having Fun" ALSO part of the definition of an Inventive User ? Absolutely essential. > Which leaves us with the question "Is Revolution for Fun or for > Business ? Yes. It's not an either-or, it's a both-and and that's its beauty. The question isn't what you can use it for, the question we keep running into is, given RR's limited marketing resources, where's the "sweet spot' in the market that they should target with their product line and with advertising and promotion? I'm on the Inventive User side of that argument but, like you, I DON'T HAVE A REAL VOTE. And that's as it should be. Those with skin in the game should make the decisions. It's just fun to kibitz. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought" >From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html _______________________________________________ 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
