Re: [OT] AppleScripter's Salary
Re: [OT] AppleScripter's Salary
- Subject: Re: [OT] AppleScripter's Salary
- From: Chris Page <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:11:59 -0800
On Feb 26, 2007, at 18:22 PM, Doug McNutt wrote:
First Hypercard and then AppleScript were advertised as
"programming for the rest of us" with "English-like" syntax that
made it all simple enough that a priesthood of paid programmers
would not be required.
Nobody said anything about not paying fair value for expert skill.
"Priesthood" is orthogonal to "professional". I *could* perform a
number of repairs on my car, given a manual and enough time, but
there's *value* in having an experienced expert do it for me.
Hypertalk and AppleScript are accessible to a fantastically larger
group of people than assembly or C programming, but most computer
users I know aren't ever going to use them at all. If they need
professional software written in one of these languages they're going
to hire a professional to do it.
Automator helps provide even more accessibility, but there are still
going to be vast numbers of people who won't even deal with that
level of detail themselves, favoring paying an expert.
That could still become true. But what has actually happened is
that shell scripting is in fact easier than AppleScript!
In what way? Can you elaborate?
I've programmed in dozens of languages over the course of decades and
I find AppleScript objectively easier to use than any shell scripting
language I've encountered. It's going to depend on what you're trying
to do, of course, and whether you've got convenient OSAXen around to
provide the fundamental operations you need. (If you don't, you may
have to resort to driving shell commands from AppleScript
occasionally, but that's not the same as "shell scripting is easier
than AppleScript".)
Whatever happened to the original concept that would make paid
Apple scripters an oxymoron?
I don't recall that concept being mentioned when either Hypercard or
AppleScript was introduced.
It sounds to me like you're falling prey to the "excluded middle"
logical fallacy. "Easier" and "accessible" do not exclude "expert",
"valuable" and "paid".
--
Chris Page - Super Happy Fun Engineer
Do not taunt Super Happy Fun Engineer.
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