Re: In defense of 'English-like' AS (was Re: Search a file question - Mac OS 9)
Re: In defense of 'English-like' AS (was Re: Search a file question - Mac OS 9)
- Subject: Re: In defense of 'English-like' AS (was Re: Search a file question - Mac OS 9)
- From: email@hidden (Michael Sullivan)
- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 14:49:36 -0400
- Organization: Society for the Incurably Pompous
>
AppleScript is a fairly complex fairly powerful scripting system that
>
fools you into thinking you could learn how to use it. Then you try to
>
do more than record things and you feel stupid and useless. Later you
>
find out that you can do it.
>
It's the fooling you long enough to get you hooked part that makes
>
AppleScript unique.
Hmm. You must have been lucky enough to start by working in an area
where recording actually worked. I didn't find applescript any easier
to learn than any other programming language of similar power.
While I understand people's reaction to some perl at first look, if one
is willing to read a book on it, and play around for a bit, it's not
really so much harder to deal with than AS.
The killer issue is that I already *know* how to work with AS, and am
comfortable with it. Shell is something I haven't used regularly in a
dozen years (so, of course, even much of what I remember has changed),
and I've never used perl until recently.
But, to be honest, I'd be perfectly happy if there was an osa
architecture for some other language that allowed it to control
applications in the way that applescript does, to just switch over.
It would suck for a while, but eventually you'd learn it. The real
issue though, is that I don't want to have to change every few years.
Once I switch to perl, will we be expected to switch to ruby or python
in order to get full support in 2008?
On the development side, this seems to be apple's direction. They
appear to write everything to aim at a particular language, and
invariably choose a language that is neither especially popular, nor the
most powerful. In the 80s it was Pascal, now it's objective-C. I have
no particular fondness for C++ or Java vs. objective-C, but their
immense popularity right now means we can be pretty certain they won't
go out of style. Pascal was never all that popular outside of academia,
except for programming macs, and objective-C seems destined to suffer
the same fate.
If you're going to work with a language not many use, why not pick one
of the most powerful possible, such as Common Lisp, Dylan or Smalltalk.
Then you're getting huge tangible benefits for working in a language few
others use. I guess you have to know enough about those language to
understand why they are more powerful... But Apple should have people
who grok Dylan, since they're the ones who started it.
To be totally serious, I think the company that manages to tie one of
these more powerful languages into their OS toolbox in a way that makes
it really easy to write hacks is going to draw the primo hackers, and
find that it's a big win long term, because really cool software will
get *written for them*.
Michael
--
Michael Sullivan
Business Card Express of CT Thermographers to the Trade
Cheshire, CT email@hidden
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