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

[András Murányi]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 08:39, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> 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 agree. And NB when I advocate the low-end, I'm by no means against the
high-end. The high-end is the avant-garde, so to say. It's not an either-or
game.


>  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.
>

Hmm. Definitely the GUI comes to my mind first, the put menu-bar,
autocompletion, search, zooming, the magic glass - these all make it more
accessible and "user friendly". I guess, beginners and amateurs (like me)
need these more than experts do.


>
>  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.
>
>
My original wording was "professional". Professional, full-time, or
high-end, all different essays to verbalize my fuzzy idea.

András
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/attachments/20120312/ac6f7209/attachment.htm>