On Sat, 21 Mar 2009, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
And one last little story that I just remembered: I didn't realize that [send pd] was even a possibility until recently. I had always seen [; pd dsp 1( and figured messages to pd had to be sent that way.
So is this a sign that this part of Pd is difficult, or a sign that you didn't learn it at the beginning? What if I teach that thing at the very beginning of a course? The beginners may get themselves to think that it's a very basic concept of pd, and won't understand your recommendation to get it removed.
Btw, it's in pd/doc/2.control.examples/10.more.messages.pd , and I'd have trouble considering anything in that folder as being non-basic.
The problem with removing unneeded words and concepts from a course is that it doesn't prepare the students for the world, it prepares the students for an exam (or for anything else that happens within the class). Which means that once they try to handle patches made outside of this little world, it reveals those holes in their knowledge.
Once that I giving some kind of crash course on pd, I said that outlets are linked to inlets using lines, connections, wires, cords or patchcords. Later I was told by a teacher that it's wrong to do so and that I should only be stating one word and use it consistently. Well, I disagree a lot. I don't want to cultivate students in a bubble. If they try to search mailing-list archives for something related to patchcords, they really do have to search for those five words in order to find everything, and then if they talk to anyone outside of the course they have to be able to communicate. It's the same deal for semicolons imho.
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