Hello, I would be pleased to react to the long thread about PD usability as a new and not experienced user of PD. I know a bit about Max but I am not a programmer even if I know a bit of C though.
I went to PD because of a project of gig online that only PD with the external [shoutcast~] and [shoutamp~] could have handled at the time I began. I tried a bit of Max before but without a real project in mind thus without diving deeply into it.
I enjoy very much PD. The features I would love to see in the next versions of PD, is a much enhanced documentation about how to compile (flags, make file, where, lib and externals).I would have loved to read in the doc what tk/tcl does in conjunction with PD, what are the different directories in the PD directory used for and so on. Having said so, I do enjoy the process of doing all this things and learn how to do them as well. Thus I will agree with those who think that people have to learn how to compile, I just want more documentation...
But of course some people do not want to learn how to built a car, they just want to drive it. I think that if a program is too much oriented to make the life of its users easier, its becomes itself governed. A sad end to it is when users produce something with it and it becomes much what the program itself has done thanks to the users, that something really original. Because of that I think PD is a program for certain people and not everybody, but if people want to use it they are going to learn it, like everything else.
Pd is extraordinary for that we can configure it, install it in anyway we want and we can even write our own externals, (and that will push me to learn how to write C). And I still consider myself as an artist and not a programmer.
I take advantage of that thread to thanks people like Adam and Olaf that have really been very helpful in my first steps into the world of PD that I would like to keep open source.
Thanks,