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Dumbing Down Programming?
RunRevKev writes "The unveiling of Revolution 4.0 has sparked a debate on ZDNet about whether programming is being dumbed down. The new version of the software uses an English-syntax that requires 90 per cent less code than traditional languages. A descendant of Apple's Hypercard, Rev 4 is set to '...empower people who would never have attempted programming to create successful applications.' ZDNet reports that 'One might reasonably hope that this product inspires students in the appropriate way and gets them more interested in programming.'"
You'll never find a programming language that frees you from the burden of clarifying your ideas.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
The simple truth is that many applications don't need that much performance or strange features and if a language like this enables more people to make their own custom apps, then I applaud it.
Some people will argue "job-security through obscurity", but if your job depends on other people not understanding what you do, it's bound to end sooner rather than later anyway.
I do wonder what the limits of this language are feature-wise. What type of applications could you NOT make with this language?
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Mind you I only skimmed a couple pages in the tutorial but it's just a programming language adding more words and more typing because it may do something like spell out add rather than using +. That may let idiots grasp programming a bit more than they would have before but programming as it is does not require a degree in rocket science. It just requires that you actually have enthusiasm for rather than thinking it's just a way to make lots of money.
Not everyone is a programmer just as not everyone is a mechanic, painter, etc. I don't think we have a lack of programmers but a lack of dirt cheap programmers and companies will do whatever they can to lower wages. Perhaps they'd be better off make better programs to earn more profits.
>the more human readable and dummy proof
Actually those two are exclusive, not inclusive.
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You're quite right. Plenty of applications don't need the kinds of optimization one is going to get with C/C++. What concerns me, as we've seen with Ruby or PHP suddenly finding their way into production servers, and suddenly all the design choices (ie. simplicity vs. efficiency, footprint, etc.) come and bite you in the ass. There seems to have been this attitude over the last ten years as memory and storage prices have fallen that if you have a slow app, just throw it on a faster computer and away you go! Java UI's have suffered from this sort of "the future will fix it" thinking for 15 years now.
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It doesn't really matter in the web as 90% of the time is spent hitting the database.
Youtube runs pretty much 100% on Python, Facebook runs on Erlang and PHP. Erlang has the benefit of being highly scalable, yet it is relatively slow.
Speen in the web doesn'trelly matter much. What's important is scalability, and today's shared-nothing approach pretty mucha guarantees that at the language level.
Seriously, this is slick. I don't mean the language (it appears I need to install a plugin to view samples, which is a bit silly - I just want to see the language). No, I mean the advertising. Post it to slashdot with a title the casts it in doubt; link to the web site that requires you to install the plugin... poof! instant installed client base.