Re: obligatory snipe [was Re: how can script bundles store extra stuff?]
Re: obligatory snipe [was Re: how can script bundles store extra stuff?]
- Subject: Re: obligatory snipe [was Re: how can script bundles store extra stuff?]
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 12:15:27 +0100
Matt Neuburg wrote:
>PS But remember, this is an easy language, excellent for naïve end users.
One of the advantages of naïve end users is that they don't know any better when they're being sold a pup. This is not to say that other languages (Ruby, Python, JavaScript, RealBasic, etc.) are particularly great, mind you; just that they're not nearly as bad as folk fear.
AppleScript's one big newbie advantage is that it's tremendously easy to read: even folk who've no knowledge of programming can look at AppleScript source and grok its general meaning. Battle-hardened geeks, who can't understand why _anyone_ would want to use AppleScript, totally underestimate how crucial an advantage this is for a certain class of user. For actually writing code, however, AppleScript is way below par: other languages, despite their less charming looks, actually work out much better in terms of clarity, coherence and unambiguousness.
To be fair to AppleScript and its developers, it is still very much a "version 1.0" product, and a highly experimental one at that, and hasn't had anything like the amount of time and resources invested necessary to [radically] evolve it into a really good end-user language. More significant is Apple's recent work on Automator, which while obviously not a general-purpose programming tool, does indicate that they're thinking seriously about end-user programming once again, and exploring a much more promising vein too. Their work on professional-level visual programming tools (e.g. Quartz Composer) could also have interesting trickle-down effects.
So I'd be optimistic in the long-term, though obviously don't expect the whole end-user programming problem to be solved overnight.
has
--
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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