[PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo(

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Sat, 21 Mar 2009, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> And one last little story that I just remembered:  I didn't realize that 
> [send pd] was even a possibility until recently.  I had always seen [; pd dsp 
> 1( and figured messages to pd had to be sent that way.

So is this a sign that this part of Pd is difficult, or a sign that you 
didn't learn it at the beginning? What if I teach that thing at the very 
beginning of a course? The beginners may get themselves to think that it's 
a very basic concept of pd, and won't understand your recommendation to 
get it removed.

Btw, it's in pd/doc/2.control.examples/10.more.messages.pd , and I'd have 
trouble considering anything in that folder as being non-basic.

The problem with removing unneeded words and concepts from a course is 
that it doesn't prepare the students for the world, it prepares the 
students for an exam (or for anything else that happens within the class). 
Which means that once they try to handle patches made outside of this 
little world, it reveals those holes in their knowledge.

Once that I giving some kind of crash course on pd, I said that outlets 
are linked to inlets using lines, connections, wires, cords or patchcords. 
Later I was told by a teacher that it's wrong to do so and that I should 
only be stating one word and use it consistently. Well, I disagree a lot. 
I don't want to cultivate students in a bubble. If they try to search 
mailing-list archives for something related to patchcords, they really do 
have to search for those five words in order to find everything, and then 
if they talk to anyone outside of the course they have to be able to 
communicate. It's the same deal for semicolons imho.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec