On Wed, 19 Aug 2009, Gabriel Vinazza wrote:
Miller, I enjoyed very much reading your note, thanks for sharing your achievements and concerns. As an artist, I found lots of answers on Pd. Many of the things you seem to be worry about are clearly reflected on the software and all the community.
I hope as many people who read that paper can read it critically. Several of the ideas contained therein are detrimental and harmful to the perception and evolution of Pd/Max. Things like: Max isn't a "programming environment", and even less a "real-world programming environment"; features are left out because Max users aren't professional programmers; Max is "lacking any notion of linear control-flow" (whatever that means???); Max doesn't have scoping because musicians don't need it; the idea that object-oriented programming is all about inheritance; elegance in code has nothing to do with making creative music; the computer-science crowd preaches that reuse of code is essential to communicating knowledge; Max somehow opposed itself to computer science; "The computer should ideally feel in the musician's hands like a musical instrument, needing only to be tuned up and then played" (!!!); etc... well I should put a (!!!) after each of those phrases. If you need any justification from me for any item(s) on this list I will provide it (if I did it all upfront, it could be long like a paper).
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