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From: rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: AMIGA DEMOS: Europe VS. USA
Message-ID: <1991Apr23.164302.6289@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Keywords: demos
Sender: news@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
References: <20691@brahms.udel.edu> <1991Apr23.071311.46295@vaxb.acs.unt.edu>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 91 16:43:02 GMT
Lines: 115

In article <1991Apr23.071311.46295@vaxb.acs.unt.edu> wright@etsuv2.etsu.edu writes:
>>I think you have hit on something here. I wonder if it isn't that
>>comparatively few U.S. teenagers are developing software on any
>>platform. I personally only know of a couple who do. Most are too busy
>>going to the mall, etc. on weekends.
>
>I may be flamed for what I am about to say, but here it is anyway. :-)
>
>I think this comes to the difference between Europe and the US.  Teens in
>America are very short on attention span.  I think this comes from watching
>television too much.  I mean, the commercials are so fast, the shows are so fast
>it teaches the teens to have a short attention span.  Programming something
>like a demo takes patience and perserverance that only limited numbers of teens
>here actually have.  I know my attention span as a teen was very limited and I 
>didn't feel like I want to spend my free time learning a computer.  I think it
>also comes to computer literacy too.  A lot of teens are afraid of learning the
>computer as being branded a nerd or something.  Peer pressure is always a
>factor as to what teens will and won't do.  Obviously, in Europe it is 'COOL'
>to code demos.  Here you'd be branded a computer nerd or a brain if you coded
>demos, no matter how cool they were.  Teens don't like to be branded, they want
>to be one of the crowd.  

   This is not a flame, but this simply is not the case. The C64 proved this.
For instance, a personal friend of mine "Wanderer" has programmed over 100
demos on the C64, yes 100. He runs a bbs now with a 80 meg harddrive full of
his demos from 1985-1990. On the C64, there were many American teen
coders (in the hundreds). For instance the group I was in had 4 programmers,
all age 15-18. Personally, I have about 50 disks full of American
C64 demos. Yes, in the US you are branded a "nerd" for being smart, but
most of us didn't care, it was the competition and "fame" of writing
demos/intros that fueled our desire. The computer was a seperate world.
In fact, the Computer Underground is very much a totally different
world with different moral and social values. What stopped my coding,
was flunking the 12th grade and having to make classes up. I was
more enthusiastic about finishing a demo/intro than doing my term paper.
The Amiga is not as popular in the US as it is in Europe, but try looking
at the number of software done on the C64 and IBM by teens. 

>>Those who are older, with jobs, are writing the productivity software.
>>I know I certainly have no time to even THINK of anything other that
>>what I absolutely have to create.
>
>Cash is always on everyone's mind.  That is how to get cash.  I think (and I
>may be flamed for generalizations) that teens here are pushed by their
>parents to be bread winners early on.  As well as teens want to 'go to the
>movies' 'mall' 'have a car' 'eat out' 'buy clothes' etc etc.  So they need
>cash.  To get cash they have to get a job.  Hence, less time for coding. This 
>isn't to say the European teens don't want this too, but more European teens 
>choose to do computer coding than do American teens.  I think it partly because
>of the peer and parent pressures here and probably several other factors as
>well that keep teens from learning to code.  

  No, more European teens don't choose to code compared to Americans. Perhaps
on the Amiga they do, but not on the C64/IBM. For instance, the sheer
number of cracking groups in Europe outnumber the US not because of
the # of programmers, but because the US crackers had better distribution.
In Europe (on the C64) most crack groups duplicated each others releases
because cracks were sent by mail(usually only one member of the group had
a modem, 300 baud usually, and the cracks had to be mailed to him for
uploading to the US). In America, mostly every member of the group had
a 1200/2400 baud modem, and every group had about 2-3 bbses where their
cracks could be downloaded from. Any duplicate releases were frowned
upon. New US crack groups would pop up every month but they could never
compete with the "big three" since the big groups had better connections and
usually got new software the very day it hit the shelves. Dispite this,
there were still hundreds of US coders (probably an underestimate) dating
all the way back to the C64's release. Also, DEMOS aren't the only
kind of coding you can do, there were literally tens of thousands of
other kinds of programs done, just check out QuantumLink.

 And concerning demos, they are not the most difficult kind of programming
on the Amiga, they are the easiest. Spend about an hour in the hardware
manual once and if your good at algorithms, in a few days you'll have
yourself a library of routines for drawinbg lines and moving bobs.
The OS by volume, is much harder to learn because there are so many
structures and functions to know. When your programming asm on the Amiga,
all you need to know are the hardware registers, any structures you
use are yours so you already know what they contain.

>>Sure wish we could harness all that European creativity and free time
>>into better productivity software...
>
>Yes, they could make some awesome productivity software with all of their
>coding ability.  I know that some really awesome Multimedia software could 
>come from them.  Unfortunately, most coders do not like the multitasking part 
>of the Amiga.  They prefer to hit the hardware and by pass the slow 
>multitasking.  Just to think, having some of the vectorgraphic, vectorball,
>plasma, copper tricks at your disposal along with IFF images and sounds all
>rolled into a productivity multimedia package.  I can't imagine.

 There is nothing "awesome" about copper tricks and vectorballs. They are
easy once you shut the OS down. Multitasking on the Amiga is not slow,
graphics.library has just too much overhead. Eurocoders don't hit the
hardware because its faster, they do it because it's easier. How many
teens can afford to become a developer, purchase the autodocs, rkms, devcon
notes, and the AmigaDOS manual? Do you think those teens purchase
Devpac or Seka? I doubt most European or American teens could write
a program like AmigaVision, it's too much work. Most demo coding is done is
a week, usually less, with the majority of time taken up programming
tools you need and waiting for the graphics/music to get done.

>--------------------------------------------------------------
>Brian Wright
>wright%etsuvax2@ricevm1.rice.edu   or   wright@etsuvax2.bitnet
>--------------------------------------------------------------

  One thing I am sick of in the US is the way intelligence and creativity
are put down. Why does being a "nerd" have bad connotations? If anything,
it should be encouraged. I wonder how it is in Europe and Japan? 

--
/ INET:rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu     *   // The opinions expressed here do not      \
| INET:r_cromwe@upr2.clu.net  | \X/  in any way reflect the views of my self.|
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