Hi again,
Stephen Sinclair wrote:
However, as seen in this thread, it is sometimes an very confusing issue for beginners in Pd, especially if they have any kind of previous experience with Max.
Generally, the beginners I am teaching have *no* experience with PD or MAX, so it is simply a matter of teaching them that computers are dumb animals, and that you have to be very clear about what order you want them to do things, or they might do them in the wrong order (or not at all!). Explaining that screen position determines it is one way out, and saying that they must declare what order things will happen with [trigger] is another way out.
Which one seems to make more sense? It depends on who you ask, and what their background is. If they have a background with programming at all, of course.
People coming to visual programming languages from text-based ones, with very clear DO, WHILE, UNTIL and etc loops, are often horrified by what they see as an absolute arbitrariness in the order of operations. They might argue that basing it on screen position is entirely too arbitrary. I am inclined to agree.
So I am very careful when instructing newcomers about these kinds of things. Unlike Mathieu's (hopefully facetious) comment some emails back on this thread, I would rather not leave them in the dark to struggle for themselves about it, because that's exactly the point where most people throw up their hands and leave PD behind. When working with beginners, I don't think that [trigger] throws up any more difficulties than any other thing in PD. It's the concept of an order of operations in computing that is confusing and must be learned, regardless of the way in which it is handled.
best, d.