Our announcement of the Day One Pass we are offering with the conference in Las Vegas, has sparked a hot debate in the Revolution community. The promotional material (in case you missed it) has the subject line "Learn Programming in 1 Day." You can have a look at the flyer here.

The debate centers around just what is meant by "learn programming" and whether you really could expect to do this in one day.

I might mention here that no one has had anything but positive reactions to the topics covered during the Day One Pass. In fact, some people have now signed up who had previously held off just because they had thought only "expert" or "advanced" programmers attended a developer conference. But the Day One sessions schedule, which starts with a blank page and moves on through each major area of Revolution functionality (including Internet functions, database queries, and standalone building) is specifically designed for beginners.

"I for one have about 30 years of experience as a programmer,
and have used about 20 different languages ... and still am reluctant to claim to be a programmer."

One viewpoint is that programming is a lifelong learning exercise, and a claim that you could learn it in one day is outrageous. Of course, this is true. Even gurus can and do continue learning new things about programming on a regular basis. This is as true of Revolution programming as any other kind of programming.

Just because it's easy to get started with Revolution, doesn't mean it doesn't have the depth and flexibility needed to perform a full range of programming tasks, and to access that depth you need to go on learning. Indeed, there are so many potential uses for Revolution there can only be a handful of people — if that — who could realistically claim to know everything there is to know about it.

"This sounds like a great opportunity for self-taught 'programmers' like me to actually build a solid foundation (instead of the sloppy mess I currently muddle by with — hey, I DO have my roots in BASIC after all — color me master of spaghetti code) onto which to tack the day-to-day learning we are doing."

Many people simply pick up Revolution and start doing whatever particular task it is they want to achieve. Along the way they pick up the specific knowledge they need to achieve that task, but they may remain ignorant of many other, even quite basic areas of the environment and its capabilities. This training course is a great opportunity to fill in those blanks.

"But to be able to write a simple program in a day is fully achievable for beginners, and in my own view constitutes 'programming.'"

A more moderate view is that given the high level of the Revolution programming language and environment, it is perfectly possible to create a simple program during the course of a day, which illustrates many of the basic principles of programming in Revolution. A programmer is "one who makes a program" and this can therefore be called "learning programming."

"I'm afraid that claims such as 'learn programming in 1 day' will keep
most serious programmers away from Rev for a long time, as they'll keep
seeing it as a funny toy for beginners..."

An interesting sidetrack from this line of reasoning is the whole question of "if it's so easy to learn to program in Revolution, that makes it a toy, doesn't it?" It was suggested, if you tell someone they can learn it in a day, they will never take Revolution seriously as a programming environment. To be worthwhile, apparently, it has to be hard to learn to program... I have to say, I disagree with this line of reasoning. I recall on one occasion demonstrating Revolution at a trade show. I was showing something extremely basic, how to create a button that goes "beep." As anyone who has used Revolution knows, this is the work of approximately 20 seconds to create. However, one C++ programmer I showed this to was amazed. For him, this was hours of work. Does that mean that the button I produced was invalid? Not real in some way? A "toy" button? No, it was, of course, a perfectly standard and functional interface object. The fact that it took seconds to make instead of hours was completely irrelevant. Why re-invent the wheel when you have Revolution?

Having said that, it's clear that just because you can literally write fewer lines of code to do the same things that other languages do; just because you can usually read and understand your code months after writing it; just because the compile step is missing and you can build and debug your projects interactively; and (most importantly) just because you can have more fun in Revolution does not mean that Revolution is a toy. There is such a thing as bloated and inefficient code in Revolution. And there is also beautiful, fast, and elegant code.

Another interesting tack the discussion has taken, is in regard to the tagline itself and how it relates to marketing the product.

"Therefore, I'd prefer, 'Learn how to produce a functioning
piece of software that will boost your (or your client's )productivity
and that isn't already available as freeware, shareware or commercial
app in 1 day.'

Or, as suggested in earlier posts, much better :

'Learn how to code as you think in 1 day'
'Kill your fear of programming in 1 day.'"

If you are creating programs to sell, its not enough just to be programmer, you do need a basic grasp of some marketing essentials as well. A short, punchy subject line is really essential on any marketing material you prepare, if you want to get your message across. I don't think Apple would sell a huge number of MacBook Air notebooks if they used the subject line in their emails: "Get the one of the thinner laptops on the market that we know of, which is quite lightweight and gives you a reasonable amount of power."

I asked our marketing director, Bill Marriott, about this. "There are dozens of sites out there with recommendations about subject lines," he said. "Most of them will tell you that effective subjects are short, less than 40 or so characters, have the recipient's name in them, and are action-oriented."

He continued, "Our very first hurdle is to get the customer to read the email. Then we can elaborate on what we're promoting and the benefits to them in a way that helps them make a decision."

I personally love "Kill your fear of programming in 1 day." That is certainly something this one day training course should achieve. Of course the current offer goes beyond that. You'll be able to attend the live training, but you'll also receive a DVD with all the sessions from the rest of the conference for free (a $249 value). You can keep reviewing the first day till you've mastered those concepts. Then, when you're ready to build on what you learned in the beginner sessions, you can go on to some of the exciting advanced concepts covered in the rest of the conference.

I'm somewhat reminded of the axiom, "give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for life." The aim of this one-day course in Revolution is to teach you how to "fish," or how to build a program in Revolution. We'll give you the building blocks you need, show you where the tool shed is, and together we'll build a small, functional hut. Just four walls and a roof but it'll work, and you can use the same principles when you start on your very own Taj Mahal.

Why not come along and find out for yourself what our team of experts can teach you about programming in a single day?