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 Sat Jan 10 2009 - 18:15:36 GMT