On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:29:00 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

>>> OK. Well apparently you're in the minority. It seems every time I talk
>>> about my various ray tracer programs, all anybody can say is "yeah,
>>> but it doesn't have feature X" or "oh, you're wasting your time, it'll
>>> never be as fast as Y" or "I think that's a stupid way to do it, why
>>> don't you give up now?" or...
>> 
>> I think you'd find that a lot of computer *users* don't write
>> raytracers in their spare time.  I can think of a handful of users here
>> who probably haven't (just off the top of my head).
> 
> OK, well maybe it's just a vocal minority that makes it seem otherwise
> then? (How many times is *that* the way??)

That's entirely possible.  Some people are going to read "hey, I wrote a 
raytracer" and think "neat, that's something I could never do, wouldn't 
have the first idea how to write, or even what sorts of questions to ask 
that wouldn't make me look stupid" and say nothing.

I've talked in here in the past about playing the violin.  Two or three 
other people joined in saying (essentially) "Hey, I play an instrument as 
well".  Everyone else was quiet.  It's not a safe assumption to say 
"everyone plays a musical instrument, so there's nothing special about 
it" when the only people who replied were also experienced musicians and 
nobody else had anything to say about it.

It's not unusual for a couple of talkative people to "shout down" what 
you're saying and make it *seem* common.  I've told you before, you've 
got good skills, don't let anyone tell you differently.  Are there things 
you could learn?  Dude, anyone who claims to know *everything* is either 
deluded or a liar (or often both).  There are things *everyone* can learn.

Everyone has things they're good at and they're bad at.

Jim

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