Re: Nice Automator article on O'Reilly
Re: Nice Automator article on O'Reilly
- Subject: Re: Nice Automator article on O'Reilly
- From: Elliotte Harold <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 08 May 2005 16:49:25 -0400
John C. Welch wrote:
Um, you're a programmer, so you telling me it's unfriendly is not the the
unfriendly I was talking about.
You're confusing flat out disagreement with misunderstanding. I do
understand exactly what you're saying. I simply don't believe it.
AppleScript is confusing and poorly designed for *everyone*. It is a bad
language. The problem is not that making AppleScript accessible to
non-programmers makes it inaccessible to programmers. The problem is
that a poor effort to design a language for non-programmers ended up
creating a language that looked superficially friendly, but that is in
fact massively unfriendly to everyone, programmer and non-programmer
alike. I agree that no language is perfect for everyone and every use.
However, AppleScript is bad for everyone.
Incidentally, it is worth remembering that one of Apple's innovations
and insights was that there really wasn't a difference between making
something easy for novices and making it easy for power users. What was
easy to use and easy to learn for a novice was equally easy to use and
learn for a power user. This is something they figured out more than
twenty years ago. The problem with AppleScript is not that Apple
designed a language that non-programmers could use. Had they done this
well there'd be no complaint. Programmers and non-programmers alike
could use it productively. The problem is that Apple designed a bad
language that is hard for anyone to use.
AppleScripts a turkey. It's time to admit it and create something
better. The sole benefit to the language itself comes from its ability
to glue together applications written in other applications; and even
that's weak because most applications aren't scriptable, and those that
are have poorly thought-out, badly documented dictionaries.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold email@hidden
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim
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