Computer Programming for Everybody, a Newbie Project

rzed rzantow at ntelos.net
Wed Sep 17 04:21:20 EDT 2003


Arthur wrote:
> Ron asks -
>
>> Any other ideas would be appreciated. Meanwhile, I would be
>> interested if anyone would offer thoughts on which of the 5
>> directions for future activity sound most interesting.
>
> Sorry Ron.
>
> Can you remind me what the connection to CP4E is, and why you are
> headlining that slogan in connection with your work.
>
> You, as did I with my own project, with sustained effort over a three
> year period -  starting, let's say from scratch - produced something
> of which each of us can hopefully be rightfully proud.
>
> Three years of sustained effort.
>
> But we seemed to have taken away different lessons.
>
> My expereince led me to look upon the CP4E slogan quite askance.
> Yours, apparently, allowed you to embrace it.
>
> It seems to me "everybody" who's imagination is ignited by something
> to the extent that it carries them through 3 years of sustained
> effort can expect to be doing "computer programming" somewhere along
> that line.
>
> Not very surprising, really.
>
> No slogans helped me along - that I do know.
>
> It was three years of sustained effort.
>
> For everybody?
>
> Are we *required* to embrace that notion?
>
> Yes everybody  - let's say - has that potential. But that was true
> before Python came along.
>
> For some - like myself - Python was a real factor in helping realize
> that potential. I am a raving fan, in fact.
>
> But I do not discount my 3 years of sustained effort as anything less
> than 3 years of sustained effort, and seem to  think that that was a
> bit of factor, as well.
>
> And would love to see the CP4E slogan go away now, peacefully and
> happily.
>

This post is very confusing to me. I'm not sure what a three-year project in
itself has to do with CP4E. Would you say that a slogan like "Literacy for
Everyone" should go away because it took you three years to write a novel?

I've worked on very few programs that required a three-year sustained
effort. The large projects that did are not, I think, in any way related to
the idea of CP4E. To my mind, the things that are related are three-minute
projects (well, okay, a little longer than that): quick programs that are
purpose-built to allow an actual job to be done. By "actual job" I mean the
job of, say, teaching, or editing, or whatever it is that the
non-programmers who create the handy little programs are paid to do. Some of
those utilities are useful enough to work into more elaborate and general
programs, but not everyone has the same needs, and not everyone has the
dedication or capability to do the sustained work you seem to be talking
about.

I would certainly never discount a three-year project; the effort is
laudable, and presenting the result to others can be daunting. Most of the
programs 'everyone' writes do not, I believe, fall into that category. But
they make the lives of their users a little better nonetheless, and that, it
seems to me, is the point of CP4E.

--
rzed







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