Hi Kassen, Nick,
The statement I made was of course bad faith, and I was not claiming any
superiority of SC on any other livecoding environment. It was not to be
taken seriously, just meant to (gently) poke chuck users as I am an SC
user myself. And, of course, I did not launch this questionnaire to
prove this point. I was just curious, and I indeed am quite struck of
the number of different possibilities to livecode. I wasn't aware for
example that it was possible to livecode in C, REALBasic ... So, I think
the most relevant result lies after the fifth place, getting aware of
what some people use to livecode. And it intices me to know more about
what is possible in livecoding.
By the way, to rebound on the results and try to explain the first
places, and the fact that the trio Fluxus/Chuck/Impromptu got more
"tries" than regular users is the fact that these software are *per se*
livecoding environments (as far as I know) unlike SC which can be used
also for non real time synthesis. I am pretty sure there is even a
certain amount of people using SC without having livecoded or used JITLib.
So to say, that this trio software have dedicated mailing lists where (I
guess, I am not a subscriber) people already talk about livecoding,
whereas SC list only gets a few topics on livecode. I guess then that SC
users who wants to talk on livecoding would post on this list whereas
the other trio could do so directly on their dedicated lists. Thus, the
percentage of SC users on livecode list, compared to the other, might be
higher and explaining the fact that SC users *also* tried
Chuck/Fluxus/Impromptu but did not stick to them for the reasons you and
Nick explained very well.
And of course, I am really happy to see such diversity in programming
environments, which also means that livecoding is really alive. And I
also always feel impressed when experiencing other people using
different OS/environments/software than I do.
Best
Sylvain
Click Nilson a écrit :
> Sylvain, thanks for compiling the survey results.
>
> And thanks for your thoughts, Kas. On the 'choice' front, I'm not sure
> to what extent we adopt things that we invest time into and start to
> give results, irrespective of how perfectly that match any putative
> 'ultimate way of thinking' (we do sometimes change to match the system
> too!). I haven't played around with ChucK (particularly newer
> versions) as much as I should because I have limited time, and happy
> creating things using the other systems I've already put time into.
> You might be lucky and find the best fit to your personality straight
> away, or you might work hard at something, make some breakthroughs,
> and finally end up adopting it because it's what is now getting you
> results. So a certain amount of happenstance comes in; it's often hard
> to judge more complicated systems straight away, anyway. You might
> like them both, if in an ideal world you only had time to become
> expert in both. Is it a bad thing to 'learn the minimum to get what
> you want done, then keep on using that minimal set until it becomes
> painfully obvious that there might be better ways so the cost of
> learning is offset against end results'? Making the payoff judgement
> is rather difficult in places, and the pull between technology and
> artistic results is rather involved! The more we learn, perhaps the
> more complicated these equations get, and the more pull we feel...
>
> I won't comment on the Apple thing except to say, for me, back in
> 2001, when SC 2 was Mac only, I switched from PC in order to get easy
> access to SC. I found OS 9 weird to start with compared to Windows,
> but because I'd started to get results with SC I kept at it...
>
> respectfully,
> N
>
>
>
>
>
> On 10 Jan 2009, at 18:14, Kassen wrote:
>
>> Sylvain
>>
>> P.S. (Troll) : I notice that, like apple machines, SC is very like
>> "trying is adopting" ;)
>>
>>
>> Ok, I'll bite.
>>
>> I disagree, I think it's subtly more complicated. I had many
>> discussions about SC and CK with James (Dewdrop World) on the Electro
>> Music forum and what we arrived at is that different people think in
>> different ways and so end up prefering various syntaxes. This
>> conclusion was based mainly on "gut feeling"; we did no proper
>> research on this but I think we also have yet to see a concrete
>> counter example. Some people pick up SC very quickly, some get into
>> ChucK and do the same, these people might look at the other language
>> as being very confusing. This seems to be more important than
>> differences like block processing, "strong timing", a server-client
>> model and so on. I suspect that the initial learning curve bump is
>> the most important thing in adopting a language and there it matters
>> whether the language "speaks your language", after that we may be
>> vocal about enjoying or feeling limited by various other -more
>> technical- factors but I think that's the core.
>>
>> I think the same holds for OS's. With the switch that Apple made in
>> the past years to x86 hardware and a custom graphical shell on top of
>> Unix it's become very clear that the one thing that's really
>> different about Apple is their design (industrial design, graphical
>> and in particular interface design). For some people that design is
>> very appealing, much like others hold strong opinions on prefering
>> KDE or Gnome as Linux desktop or setting the Windows explorer to
>> "classical" mode or .say. army boots v.s. sneakers.
>>
>> Different people experience the world in a different way and indeed
>> *think* in a different way. I don't think there would be much appeal
>> to the concept of "public thought" in livecoding if that didn't hold
>> true, If you'd think like I do there would be no reason for me to
>> watch you livecode or indeed for us to debate on a mailing list.
>>
>> When I go early to my radio show and watch Tom Tlalin use his Mac,
>> often using five programs (including SC) at the same time and all in
>> a very expressive way, I'm always quite impressed yet every time I
>> have to use OSX myself I'm confronted with the interface working in a
>> way that simply isn't mine. Nothing seems to be where I expect it to
>> be and in general I experience the interface as very "restless" and
>> "incoherent" (I experience much of the world in that way), I have to
>> use the terminal to even tell what programs are currently "open" and
>> often that seems to be the fastest way to accomplish basic tasks like
>> moving files as well. To be perfectly clear; I'm not claiming OSX
>> *is* like that, merely that I experience it as such, I'm sure others
>> would experience my own prefered interface as needlessly spartan.
>>
>> On paper OSX looks terrific to me; a Unix with plenty of drivers for
>> quality soundcards, plenty of commercial "profesional" programs and
>> the posibility of using a lot of Open Source ones as well but to me
>> it's the trying that actually kept me from adopting it so for me your
>> hypothesis didn't hold true. I see no harm in that; actually I
>> sometimes go early with on purpose to enjoy watching Tom play his
>> music on his radio show and juggle his Aqua desktop, it's a sight to
>> behold, I wish he'd perform with a projected screen.
>>
>> I'm not intending this to start a flame-war; this is a touchy
>> subject, even if our personal preferences are just preferences we
>> still experience them as very personal, I'm merely observing that
>> both syntax and user interface are very important for our experience
>> as of a system. If anything, to me it seems like SC with it's
>> client-server model is comparable to Linux where one can use
>> X-server, then pick what graphical shell one prefers, linking
>> Turning-completeness on the abstract level to our personal experience
>> on the practical. If it were up to me that would be where computing
>> would go.
>>
>>
>> Yours,
>> Kas.
>
>
Received on Sun Jan 11 2009 - 13:38:36 GMT