One, Two, Many
I'm told that some primitive counting systems count as follows: one... two... many.
This actually makes a great deal of sense. There are numerous things in life of which there is only one. One planet. One self. One sun. One now.
Then there are numerous occasions where the number two is uniquely useful. It takes two to tango, to mix DNA, to use a see-saw....
After two, however, there is a sense that if you can do something three times you can do it twenty times. (Yes, I simplify).
In our videos on Silverlight 1.0 I think we've covered a good bit of "1" -- that is, your first program, your first animation, your first, transformation, etc. There are some lacunae, but we're closing in on covering 1 pretty well.
We've covered "many" pretty well, but there is much more to do. These are the videos in which we show you how to string together these building blocks to do something useful; something that isn't just a toy. I'd point to our videos on creating a video player and on data analysis with animation as a start in this direction.
But today I realized that we've neglected "two." A user wrote with serious confusion about how to add a second object to a canvas. Where does the second story-board go? Where does the event handler go? These are perfectly reasonable questions, and, of course, once you get 2, it is much easier to move on to "many"
So, dear reader, here is my question: should we have some videos on 2? Would that intervening step be helpful? That is, rather than jumping from "here is how you add an object and animate it" to "and now here is how you do something useful with animation" would it be useful to add an in-between video on "here is how you add a second object, and animate two objects and then more" to focus on the issue of 2 (and then 3, 4, and more)?
I understand that 2 is implicit in many; but sometimes stripping things down to their most simple form makes it easier to understand them; and the simplest form of many is not 1; it is 2.
Your reactions are eagerly awaited.