darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson) (11/18/88)
Merit Badges are a great idea. They also serve as a good indication of
Amiga 'prowess'. The same concept could also apply quite well in other
situations - UNIX, System management classes, etc. - since they provide
goals, incentive, and indicators, which can help when you are trying to
learn something on your own.
So, I started taking this all semi-seriously...
It should be relatively simple to create some IFF artwork badges.
Preferably, something that is in color, but that still looks good
printed in BW. Obviously, it is not very practical to have them
officially signed/presented by a scout-master (Amiga-Guru?)...
The different badges should definately have some sort of competency
test. This gives the person (scout, Guru-wannabe, seeker-of-the-light)
some more definate goals than just "gee, I think I understand this
part, I'll just move on now...". The various Dogs and Cats can come up
with a list of "requirements" for their area(s) of expertise. These
can include completing skeleton code, finding problems in code,
building complete programs and/or answering questions. These can be
arranged from easy to hard (subjective) with a Merit badge being earned
when a minimum number of goals or points have been earned. Completing
all the goals for a badge would allow one to be known as an expert or
master in that area.
For example, the Copper is pretty much in the dark for me. I can
probably sit down and come up with a rainbench-type hack but would this
qualify me to earn a badge in Blitter/Copper? Specific goals would
help answer this question for me, as well as forcing myself to actually
get my hands dirty and finding out.
Finally, this scout analogy should probably be tied together.
This would be the "qualifying round", and would be analogous to
Cub scouts and Webelo's. The Cub-scout phase should be for the new
Amiga owner to learn makes the Amiga "special" as well as learning the
various parts of the Amiga. Cub-scouts should probably be somewhat
proficient in Workbench AND CLI (or vice-versa). Webelos should learn
what makes good Amiga programming, such as freeing up resources, as
well as the basics of exec.
--
Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com)
Programmer? Developer?