Ross Fogleman wrote:
>
> I think this whole view of having people prove that they can "program" by learning
> obscure and user-hostile applications (*ahem* vi) is BS.
> Calling it masochism would be putting it in its best light. When I write my PHP
> scripts, I use a program called "PHP Coder Pro!" for
> Windows, written in Delphi, and does that mean I write braindead code? No, it
> means that I actually value the time spent programming as
> opposed to learning some braindead commandline interface. Seriously, what's so
> wrong with making things easier for programmers (not hackers
> and hobbyists, I mean people who want to write code without having to worry about
> how they're supposed to cut'n'paste text)?
I'm going to assume one of three things based on your message: a) you
learned to program with a "real" programming language in an environment
that taught proper programming practices and you keep up those practices
even in a more lax programming environment, b) you happen to have knack
for writing really clean code even though you never learned or were
taught the "right" way to write code, or (and nothing personal here) c)
you write really crappy code.
The point that Paul and myself are making is not that user-friendly
programming environments shouldn't be available, period, but that by
providing nice-n-easy, drag-n-drop environments that place building the
UI by clicking on pretty little icons over writing actual code have the
unwanted side-effect of frequently turning out the ugliest, nastiest,
most worthless code that has even been run on a microchip. (Although I
may be putting words in Paul's mouth there... he might have somewhat
different opinion than I do. I mean, it's tough always being right, but
sometimes people *do* disagree with me... :)
Pretty little GUI environments for building applications are the
programming equivalent of telling an architect that a building's
construction can be crappy as long as it's in nice colors. Some
architects learned the "right" way to build houses and will still follow
proper building techniques even if the only requirement is appearance,
some just might have the knack and will build solid constructions
"naturally", but if anyone could be an architect as long as the houses
they built *looked* pretty, we'd have a serious safety problem on our
hands...
GUI/RAD environments definitely DO have a place in life, and if someone
already knows how to write the code, they can save man hours on the
lifetime of a project by taking away the tediousness of having to try to
code a GUI by hand. It's when people think they'll be spared the
tediousness of having to write ANY code themselves by using one of these
tools that offends me.
Maybe in twenty or thirty years when the art of computer programming has
progressed enough that it really can be considered a well-known science,
we'll have programs that can easily write other programs just by being
given an english-language description of the problem to be solved.
Until then, it requires real human intervention to turn out a decent
piece of software, and by giving the lazy majority (sorry, I'm a cynic,
I believe it's a majority) an easy out, they'll take it, and turn out a
crappy piece of software.
-- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- With Microsoft products, failure is not Derek Glidden an option - it's a standard component. Choose your life. Choose your http://www.tbcpc.org/ future. Choose Linux. http://www.illusionary.com/
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