[fpc-pascal] Working on a new way to educate people about pascal

[James Richters]

>Assuming people in that sentence, you are referring to people who use write programs or scripts which make use of databases, if you know very little about the subject of databases on that subject, how can you justify this assertion?
 
The ‘People’ I was referring to are any people who work with databases in any way… when you go to the store to return something without a receipt,  the customer assistance representative looks up your order on some kind of database system that stores all the transactions and is somehow able to retrieve yours without knowing SQL.. they are using the database, but know nothing of how it work and would never know what SQL was.



>I suggest you either brush up on these subjects or refrain from scolding people on subjects with which you have no practical experience.
 
I apologize if you feel I was scolding you, that was not my intention.  I thought we were just having a discussion about it.  You can’t understand why anyone would say this is a complicated subject and I was simply trying to somehow show you a point of view that you do not seem to understand.  My lack of experience is what qualifies me to evaluate your material better than you, because if I was familiar with the subject, I would fall into the same trap… “well this is just obvious, everyone should follow this.”   I was under the impression that you wanted honest feedback, and that’s what I have been trying to provide, and I am very sorry if I have offended you.   
 
As a software developer, I have learned from experience, that I am the absolute WORST person to test my own programs.  
 
Why is that? 
 
It’s because I wrote them, I know what they are supposed to do and what input to give them to get the desired result.  I have no possible way to truly forget what I have put in there, and so I am not capable of trying to do it in a way someone else might try to do it.
 
When I make a release to my beta testers, it’s normal that they will try to do things THEIR way and often they will not understand why the sequence they tried didn’t yield the expected result.   At this point, I could do a few different things, I can just explain to my beta testers why it didn’t work the way they wanted it to, and show them what would have worked.  That is not an ideal approach, because if my testers wanted to make it work that way, then maybe ALL of my customers also want it to work that way, or maybe 10% of them want it to work that way.  A much better solution is to listen to my testers and learn from them, and create a program that works in the way that was intuitive to THEM, not me.   The best solution would be to get it to work the way I originally wanted it to work and also the way they tried to test it at the same time, then all of my customers would get the expected results
 
So when I get feedback from my beta testers, I do not get defensive and justify why I did it the way that I did.  I don’t try to teach them the way they should have done it.  I listen to their extremely valuable feedback and try to incorporate that feedback into the product.  They are giving me a point of view that I cannot ever possibly have, because when it comes down to it, I can’t ever think the way they do.  It’s only through communicating with my testers that I can ever see that other point of view.  This other point of view is SO valuable, that I have trashed months of work on a project and re-wrote entire huge sections to make fundamental changes so that it would work the way someone other than myself might want to accomplish something.
 
I was simply trying to offer you that other point of view.   Again, I am very sorry if I offended you.
 
James
 
 
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