"Real programming" is not the be-all and end-all of programming. I've seen far too many "real programmers" whose heads are so "real far up their asses" that they write stuff that their users don't want or don't fit their needs. If you're way more interested in implementation technologies than serving the needs of your users, get a human-computer interaction specialist on your team! I'd much rather use a program by a competent VB programmer who knew want was needed and wroite a useful and usable program than the most hardcore C++ guru who cared more about how kewl his optimized Patricia tree algorithm was.
If some of the arguments presented in this discussion held water, nobody would have written any good music on the piano. It's too damned simple an instrument; however could you play or write anything more complex than twinkle twinkle little star? After all, look at its interface. Notes get lower as you play the keys to the left, and higher as you move to the right. Volume is proportional to the velocity with which you strike the keys. Only "tune kiddies" (or perhaps "score kiddies" is the better term) would be caught dead with one of those things.
I'm a strong believer in having a life and as a result also believe in tools that let you have a life. For most business applications, VB does the job quite nicely. Need speed? I'll use C++ Builder. Writing an enhanced CD? Director. CGI? Python. Given a choice between being "elite" and having a life, the life wins every time.
Perhaps it's time for everyone to go demonstrate the slashdot effect on the Ask Tog site and look at the article How Programmers Stole The Web. It provides the best and most rational argument for having an "easy" language around: "real programmers" aren't the only people with good software ideas. Think of the of those who don't qualify as "real programmers": Dan Bricklin, who came up with the spreadsheet, and Robyn and Rand Miller, who came up with Myst.
> 3- It may not buy love, but it sure as hell > improves your bargaining position.
I remember the John Keister line from the TV show "Almost Live":
Money can't buy love, but it can
rent a lot of sex.
Good for both newbies and gurus
on
Delphi for Linux
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· Score: 1
This is good news for both newbies and experienced developers.
There's an interesting article called "How Programmers Stole The Web on Bruce Tognazzini's user interface site, Ask Tog. One point it puts across is that when programming languages and environments were relatively simpler (he says in the '70's, I say in the '70s and '80s), there was an explosion in programming creativity as many people who'd never even touched a computer before were creating all kinds of interesting and even ground-breaking programs. Consider the spreadsheet, which Dan Bricklin cobbled together in BASIC, or MYST, created by the Robyn and Rand Miller using HyperCard. I've seen non-programmers write small (but often-used, even institutionalized) applications that met their own particular needs using HyperCard, Toolbook, FileMaker, Visual Basic, REALBasic and Director -- all without having to run to the local geek for anything more than a little help. In the article, Tog says that Pascal is as difficult as C, but anyone who's had to chase pointers or manage memory (or used Delphi) will probably disagree. The important thing is that the presence of a simpler (than C/C++) programming language couple with a simpler programming environment (no makefiles, no sepearate source/header files) should encourage similar development in Linux. I also think that giving people -- that means anyone, not just the code gurus -- the ability to "do it themselves" fits perfectly with the Linux philosophy. If a "serious" programmer is free to write a utility or driver if it meets some need, a non-geek should also be able to put together apps that meet their workaday needs.
It's also good news for experienced developers. I work in tandem with a hard-core human interface guy, and what I usually do is hand him VB/Delphi forms and have him lay out the interface, after which I attach the code. Having someone who's actually concerned about the interface and giving him the ability to build it and see it all at once is a great timesaver for me (as I don't have to do it) and for the users (because someone's taking their workflow into consideration). Yes, we still always start off with pen and paper when designing, but giving a person with human interface skills (but not programming skills) the ability to build interfaces is efficient and benefits the users too.
A library of ready-made interface and other components is also handy. VCL is so much nicer to deal with than MFC, and I think it'll be a considerable boon to Linux app developers. Yes, I like doing things for myself, but sometimes it's nice (and less expensive in terms of effort and debugging) when some stuff has already been done for you.
However, the most important benefit of Delphi for Linux applies to both newbies and gurus -- RAD enviroments, simpler langauges and libraries like VCL let you have a life! I can't even begin to measure the value of such a feature.
You're assuming that the only way to play Who tunes is with electric guitar. One of my non-coding activities is busking...with accordion. "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Can't Explain" are accordion songs that don't yet know they're accordion songs. Hey, even Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM have some accordion-friendly tunes.
(Maybe I could even modify the lyrics to "Won't Get Fooled Again to sing about Windows 2000: "Meet the new DOS...same as the old DOS...")
Uh, by the way -- when you made this posting, were you powering your computer with a bicycle generator and connecting to one of those new-age solar-powered ISPs?
An unusually high reliance on Wizards -- especially non-round-trip ones -- is generally a bad thing. It usually means that rather than correct some design flaws, the programmers would much come up with a duct-tape-like work-around for the symptoms rather than fix the root cause of the problem. Yes, doing this can be really expensive, but if one company can actually afford to pay people to do this kind of work, it's Microsoft.
But are you saying that "drag-and-drop" development as a principle is bad? Or just as implemented in VB and VJ? I much prefer the drag-and-drop approach to form/window design as it allows me to focus more programming effort on the underlying code behind the interface. It also lets me hand off GUI design to the UI designer (seriously, more development teams should make use of one). Borland and Symantec (add Macromedia and Adobe, if you're going to start counting HTML designers) have done a pretty good job in the field of round-trip visual designers.
Linux isn't quite ready for the average home user...yet. There's considerable work being done on the GUIs (I've seen GNOME and KDE), but as long as the work is done by programmers and not by interaction specialists, we're going to see the same Windows usability problems -- perhaps worse -- creep over to the Linux field.
"Interaction specialist" is difficult to define, as it's a position that will probably get short shrift for quite some time. AN interaction specialist is a good interface designer, preferably with some cognitive science/ergonomics background as well as a computer science background and at least some visual sense. These are people who know what Fitts' Law is and know when to favour substance over flash.
I'm watching the GUI developments in the various UNIX-based OSs (Linux) out now and coming soon (Mac OS X) tos ee what happens, and hoping that we won't end up repeating some of Microsoft's mistakes.
You are correct in that repair and maintenance, that is best left to the pros or the hobbyists willing to learn (I'm ruling out medicine as a hobby, but home renovation and car repeair is still realistic). However, we as developers should try to abstract away as much as possible in order to let the user concentrate on his or her task and not split their concentration between the mechanics of the task (dealing with the machine) and actually doing their task.
Part of the problem is that the Jungian personality profile of geeks is classified as INTP (Introverted, Intuitive, Perceiving, Thinking), a combination that makes for a relatively small portion of the general population. Inituitives can contstruct mental models more quickly, as they're pretty adept with metaphors and images (who else can grasp regular expressions or refer to a background service program as a "daemon"?). They're absent-minded professors, dreamers, great discoverers, theoreticians and inventors. The general population isn't like this, and can easily get confounded when they fail to miss the "obvious" stuff.
There are people who've already put forth better arguments than I for good usability in systems:
Bruce Toganazzini, author of "Tog on Interface" and "Tog on Software Design"
How is it a culture that prides itself on non-conventional piercings, extremely casual clothing (or even no clothing, if you read Po Bronson's book) and non-traditional offices decides to get all conservative when it comes to industrial design? If possible, technology should look good and not always look so "serious". The machine will probably not appeal to those who use tech as penis extenders, but that's not necessarily a bad thing -- the drive to making machines look serious and initimidating is probably a good chunk of what keeps women out of the field (women do have the ability to hack, many just have little time for this macho nonsense).
I do cross-platform development on reasonably inexpensive laptops (my own little company, with fairly sizable clients) and I figure I'll be doing my REALBasic, Director/Flash and CodeWarrior stuff on a new iBook soon.
As for id10ts -- yes, it's for id10ts, but realise that they're your moms. Your dads. Your brothers and sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, and everyone else who isn't a developer or doesn't know their greps from their seds from their awks (and really shouldn't have to). My mom may fall under the category of id10t, but only because she's not a hacker and sometimes finds Windows confusing. However, she's also the Chief of Cardiology at a major hospital in Toronto, and given the sedentary lifestyle of many hackers, may save a geek or two from the bug dev/null in the sky. Strange id10cy, that.
These id10ts are our users. They're the people for whom we write software, and who will hopefully pay us the big bucks. There are a lot of dumb ones out there, but there are also a lot of smart ones, who couldn't give a rat's ass about processes, threads, piping commands, and all the switches for ls or dir, and good for them. If we develop software they can't understand, it's our own fault. Let's ditch this user-hating "high priesthood" mentality, shall we?
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If some of the arguments presented in this discussion held water, nobody would have written any good music on the piano. It's too damned simple an instrument; however could you play or write anything more complex than twinkle twinkle little star? After all, look at its interface. Notes get lower as you play the keys to the left, and higher as you move to the right. Volume is proportional to the velocity with which you strike the keys. Only "tune kiddies" (or perhaps "score kiddies" is the better term) would be caught dead with one of those things.
I'm a strong believer in having a life and as a result also believe in tools that let you have a life. For most business applications, VB does the job quite nicely. Need speed? I'll use C++ Builder. Writing an enhanced CD? Director. CGI? Python. Given a choice between being "elite" and having a life, the life wins every time.
Perhaps it's time for everyone to go demonstrate the slashdot effect on the Ask Tog site and look at the article How Programmers Stole The Web. It provides the best and most rational argument for having an "easy" language around: "real programmers" aren't the only people with good software ideas. Think of the of those who don't qualify as "real programmers": Dan Bricklin, who came up with the spreadsheet, and Robyn and Rand Miller, who came up with Myst .
I remember the John Keister line from the TV show "Almost Live":
There's an interesting article called "How Programmers Stole The Web on Bruce Tognazzini's user interface site, Ask Tog. One point it puts across is that when programming languages and environments were relatively simpler (he says in the '70's, I say in the '70s and '80s), there was an explosion in programming creativity as many people who'd never even touched a computer before were creating all kinds of interesting and even ground-breaking programs. Consider the spreadsheet, which Dan Bricklin cobbled together in BASIC, or MYST, created by the Robyn and Rand Miller using HyperCard. I've seen non-programmers write small (but often-used, even institutionalized) applications that met their own particular needs using HyperCard, Toolbook, FileMaker, Visual Basic, REALBasic and Director -- all without having to run to the local geek for anything more than a little help. In the article, Tog says that Pascal is as difficult as C, but anyone who's had to chase pointers or manage memory (or used Delphi) will probably disagree. The important thing is that the presence of a simpler (than C/C++) programming language couple with a simpler programming environment (no makefiles, no sepearate source/header files) should encourage similar development in Linux. I also think that giving people -- that means anyone, not just the code gurus -- the ability to "do it themselves" fits perfectly with the Linux philosophy. If a "serious" programmer is free to write a utility or driver if it meets some need, a non-geek should also be able to put together apps that meet their workaday needs.
It's also good news for experienced developers. I work in tandem with a hard-core human interface guy, and what I usually do is hand him VB/Delphi forms and have him lay out the interface, after which I attach the code. Having someone who's actually concerned about the interface and giving him the ability to build it and see it all at once is a great timesaver for me (as I don't have to do it) and for the users (because someone's taking their workflow into consideration). Yes, we still always start off with pen and paper when designing, but giving a person with human interface skills (but not programming skills) the ability to build interfaces is efficient and benefits the users too.
A library of ready-made interface and other components is also handy. VCL is so much nicer to deal with than MFC, and I think it'll be a considerable boon to Linux app developers. Yes, I like doing things for myself, but sometimes it's nice (and less expensive in terms of effort and debugging) when some stuff has already been done for you.
However, the most important benefit of Delphi for Linux applies to both newbies and gurus -- RAD enviroments, simpler langauges and libraries like VCL let you have a life! I can't even begin to measure the value of such a feature.
You're assuming that the only way to play Who tunes is with electric guitar. One of my non-coding activities is busking...with accordion. "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Can't Explain" are accordion songs that don't yet know they're accordion songs. Hey, even Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM have some accordion-friendly tunes.
(Maybe I could even modify the lyrics to "Won't Get Fooled Again to sing about Windows 2000: "Meet the new DOS...same as the old DOS...")
Uh, by the way -- when you made this posting, were you powering your computer with a bicycle generator and connecting to one of those new-age solar-powered ISPs?
An unusually high reliance on Wizards -- especially non-round-trip ones -- is generally a bad thing. It usually means that rather than correct some design flaws, the programmers would much come up with a duct-tape-like work-around for the symptoms rather than fix the root cause of the problem. Yes, doing this can be really expensive, but if one company can actually afford to pay people to do this kind of work, it's Microsoft.
But are you saying that "drag-and-drop" development as a principle is bad? Or just as implemented in VB and VJ? I much prefer the drag-and-drop approach to form/window design as it allows me to focus more programming effort on the underlying code behind the interface. It also lets me hand off GUI design to the UI designer (seriously, more development teams should make use of one). Borland and Symantec (add Macromedia and Adobe, if you're going to start counting HTML designers) have done a pretty good job in the field of round-trip visual designers.
Linux isn't quite ready for the average home user...yet. There's considerable work being done on the GUIs (I've seen GNOME and KDE), but as long as the work is done by programmers and not by interaction specialists, we're going to see the same Windows usability problems -- perhaps worse -- creep over to the Linux field.
"Interaction specialist" is difficult to define, as it's a position that will probably get short shrift for quite some time. AN interaction specialist is a good interface designer, preferably with some cognitive science/ergonomics background as well as a computer science background and at least some visual sense. These are people who know what Fitts' Law is and know when to favour substance over flash.
I'm watching the GUI developments in the various UNIX-based OSs (Linux) out now and coming soon (Mac OS X) tos ee what happens, and hoping that we won't end up repeating some of Microsoft's mistakes.
You are correct in that repair and maintenance, that is best left to the pros or the hobbyists willing to learn (I'm ruling out medicine as a hobby, but home renovation and car repeair is still realistic). However, we as developers should try to abstract away as much as possible in order to let the user concentrate on his or her task and not split their concentration between the mechanics of the task (dealing with the machine) and actually doing their task.
Part of the problem is that the Jungian personality profile of geeks is classified as INTP (Introverted, Intuitive, Perceiving, Thinking), a combination that makes for a relatively small portion of the general population. Inituitives can contstruct mental models more quickly, as they're pretty adept with metaphors and images (who else can grasp regular expressions or refer to a background service program as a "daemon"?). They're absent-minded professors, dreamers, great discoverers, theoreticians and inventors. The general population isn't like this, and can easily get confounded when they fail to miss the "obvious" stuff.
There are people who've already put forth better arguments than I for good usability in systems:
We as a field should address these issues before we are held in the same regard as other "necessary evil" fields, such as lawyers...
How is it a culture that prides itself on non-conventional piercings, extremely casual clothing (or even no clothing, if you read Po Bronson's book) and non-traditional offices decides to get all conservative when it comes to industrial design? If possible, technology should look good and not always look so "serious". The machine will probably not appeal to those who use tech as penis extenders, but that's not necessarily a bad thing -- the drive to making machines look serious and initimidating is probably a good chunk of what keeps women out of the field (women do have the ability to hack, many just have little time for this macho nonsense).
I do cross-platform development on reasonably inexpensive laptops (my own little company, with fairly sizable clients) and I figure I'll be doing my REALBasic, Director/Flash and CodeWarrior stuff on a new iBook soon.
As for id10ts -- yes, it's for id10ts, but realise that they're your moms. Your dads. Your brothers and sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, and everyone else who isn't a developer or doesn't know their greps from their seds from their awks (and really shouldn't have to). My mom may fall under the category of id10t, but only because she's not a hacker and sometimes finds Windows confusing. However, she's also the Chief of Cardiology at a major hospital in Toronto, and given the sedentary lifestyle of many hackers, may save a geek or two from the bug dev/null in the sky. Strange id10cy, that.
These id10ts are our users. They're the people for whom we write software, and who will hopefully pay us the big bucks. There are a lot of dumb ones out there, but there are also a lot of smart ones, who couldn't give a rat's ass about processes, threads, piping commands, and all the switches for ls or dir, and good for them. If we develop software they can't understand, it's our own fault. Let's ditch this user-hating "high priesthood" mentality, shall we?