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 - 10:21:34 GMT