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Re: [rant] "Never mind the quality, feel the width!"
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Re: [rant] "Never mind the quality, feel the width!"


  • Subject: Re: [rant] "Never mind the quality, feel the width!"
  • From: has <email@hidden>
  • Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:17:00 +0000

2551 wrote:

>> On 1 Dec 2014, at 00:12, Luther Fuller <email@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Without these languages, the computer is somewhat useless
>
> I don't really understand this claim. 99% of people I know who have a mac have no idea what AppleScript is or what they could use it for. It doesn't seem to be affecting the utility of their machines. Even in my own case, I switched to the mac in 2004, but never picked up AppleScript till 2011. Didn't stop me from using my mac very productively before that.


Well, I'm sure glad it's not just me bringing a hard dose of reality to the old-timey religious revival.

*Of course* everyone on this list loves AppleScript dearly and finds it indispensable in their daily work, but *we're less than a rounding error* in Apple's total customer base. Apple sells millions of Macs a year. AppleScript has maybe a few ten thousand users. Apple could ditch AppleScript tomorrow and make up any difference in revenue just from fishing down the back of Uncle Tim's couch.

What is *nuts* is that the one significant market who should be pouncing on application scripting like kittens on catnip - the geeks - are still staying away in droves. Just winning over that one audience would easily double or triple the audience for scriptable apps; still a drop in a bucket where revenue is concerned, but valuable friends because of what else they bring to the table. No prizes for guessing the benefits of converting hundreds of application developers into enthusiastic application scripters, or having thousands of programming-savvy Python/Ruby/ObjC/etc. users beating on their apps' scripting interfaces as well.

That the AppleScript team has so thoroughly failed to deliver or sell desktop automation to programmers - "their own people" - believe me, I'm being nice when I say their work utterly sucks. If I'd released work of this quality to press, back when I was in educational publishing and starting to catch the automation bug myself, I'd still be in orbit today; that's how hard I'd have been fired. And damn right too.


Regards,

has

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