<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div id="yiv1429661665"><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;"><div id="yiv1429661665yui_3_2_0_5_1312675046322160"><span id="yiv1429661665yui_3_2_0_5_131267504632279">Anyone who would get scared off by the gymnastics/spaghetti of that patch would already have been scared off by the lack of clean symbol manipulation tools in Pd vanilla.<br><br>Your original design failed because you ignored the ease with which people can ignore the innards of a much needed abstraction. Abstractions are powerful because they don't require the author to know another language, and they can immediately be distributed to any platform on which Pd runs. Anyone who saw your list-drip-quick attachment on the list could make use of it right away in a patch.</span><span
id="yiv1429661665yui_3_2_0_5_1312675046322184" class="yiv1429661665tab"><br><br>-Jonathan<br> <br></span><blockquote id="yiv1429661665yui_3_2_0_5_131267504632254" style="border-left:2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255);margin-left:5px;padding-left:5px;"><div class="yiv1429661665yui_3_2_0_5_131267504632257" style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;"><div class="yiv1429661665yui_3_2_0_5_131267504632259" style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;"><font face="Arial" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Mathieu Bouchard <matju@artengine.ca><br><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">To:</span></b> Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika@yahoo.com><br><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cc:</span></b> Miller Puckette <msp@ucsd.edu>; Alexandre Torres Porres <porres@gmail.com>; pd-lista puredata <pd-list@iem.at><br><b><span
style="font-weight:bold;">Sent:</span></b> Sunday, August 7, 2011 2:18 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">Subject:</span></b> Turing Tarpit (was Re: (breaking symbols))<br></font><br>On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:<br><br>> I don't understand what you're saying about receive symbols. How do you get the single characters in the first place?<br><br>Oh, nevermind. Just a silly mistake of mine.<br><br>Anyway... I think that all this kind of thing will do, is scare off any potential pd users that like clean designs... I mean, such patches are quite skilled,
but wouldn't it be nice if such skills could concentrate more on things that aren't Turing Tarpit Voodoo Dance.<br><br> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit</a><br><br>It does scare me that my [list-drip] is more used than my [foreach]. Both do the same thing, but [list-drip] is more twisted, much slower than [foreach], and I originally designed it to show how ridiculous things can get when trying to be efficient while sticking to what plain vanilla 42 has to offer. The answer is that what is considered the standard class library (used by everybody) has to grow faster than what someone is willing to do. Few people have the luxury of holding back additions to core software while pondering a few years on how to name them.<br><br>I consider my [list-drip] to be a small improvement over the older [list-drip]. The big improvement is when people will stop insisting
on using an
abstraction for doing something that ought to be written in C.<br><br> _______________________________________________________________________<br>| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC<br><br><br></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></body></html>