[PD] High end, low end (was : some other topic)

[Mathieu Bouchard]

Le 2012-03-09 à 19:58:00, András Murányi a écrit :

> Then they have a certain "high end", the more advanced topics within - 
> e.g. dynamic patching for me, or libPd according to Julian. Now, someone 
> can fear that the focus of developments could move towards the "high 
> end", leaving simple folks increasingly frustrated.

Many projects are driven by the high-end. It's necessary. They're also 
driven by the high-end. Many low-end features start existing because 
high-end features first allowed them to exist. If someone makes an 
easy-to-use polyphonic synth, this synth might be using dynamic-patching 
features, perhaps new ones or new ways of using the old ones. This needs 
high-end development. In projects like Pd, development has always to be 
multi-focus.

It isn't just that. Even in the case of unrelated features, high-end 
features are what keeps the high-end users around, and they're the ones 
who write externals and abstractions, both for themselves and for others. 
Low-end users don't produce nearly as much low-end abstractions and 
externals as high-end users do.

It's that the very ability to figure out what should go in a given 
abstr/extern, and what should be left out, and all the strategies of how 
to specify args, etc., those are all skills that are characteristics of 
high-end users. Every such skill moves you towards the higher-end.

At some point I had to realise that I couldn't just ask students to make 
abstractions... I mean that I couldn't just teach them the mechanics of $1 
arguments and $0-foo local variables. They still haven't thought about how 
to figure out which ideas should become abstractions and which shouldn't, 
etc. ; they'd need something of the order of « Introduction to 
programming », perhaps several semesters, but I remember that in 
university, after the 4th such course, students only began to figure out 
what could be a good library vs a bad one. So, definitely, Pd users who 
didn't go through the equivalent of those courses (or of some other 
related courses) rarely would publish a library that other people would 
want to use. So, it's important that high-end users keep on making low-end 
components.

It's also that everybody needs to use some of those « low-end 
components »... there are lots of things common to all users. And even 
though high-end users can more easily tolerate design problems and bugs 
and various difficulties, they don't necessarily like them.

> I don't share, but I think I can understand that fear, and my point was 
> that Pd shall keep the "low end" accessible and up-to-date.

Actually, I wonder which features you have in mind when you say that.

> Yea, this is what we call in our wonderfully expressive Hungarian 
> language "szőrszálhasogatás" :o)  

What I mean about that, is that for making your point, saying full-time 
isn't simply a small exaggeration. Otherwise, I don't think I'd have made 
a fuss.

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| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC