"AppleScript Needs Programmers" [Re: Database events [way OT]]
"AppleScript Needs Programmers" [Re: Database events [way OT]]
- Subject: "AppleScript Needs Programmers" [Re: Database events [way OT]]
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 19:00:51 +0000
Stan Cleveland wrote:
> I consider has's recent return to posting here, after about four
years of near silence, to be good news.
Maybe. Maybe not. But's not suggest my primary motivation is anything
other than naked self-interest.:p Since my previous plans to get out of
the automation business went titsup, like Michael Corleone I'm pulled
back in again whether I like it or not. Which leaves me the choice of
sleeping uncomfortably each night in fear that Apple ultimately runs
AppleScript/Apple events into the ground (which'll get me lynched by
clients for selling them on a dud), or switching now to Adobe's C++ SDKs
(which'll make me half as productive at twice the cost and push me back
another six months when the damn thing should've already shipped last
summer). Every time the AppleScript team insists on ineptly squandering,
then silently abandoning, its few remaining opportunities to reverse the
platform's long, slow descent, I lose more sleep, more hair, and wonder
again why I've not already switched to a far more secure career, say,
begging on street corners. Add the creaking infirmities of age and not
having a nice lawn to shout at damn kids to get off, and damn straight
I'm going to vent some frustration. Believe me, there's many things I
rage about way harder (e.g. the entire Web Industry, for which I
consider even industrial woodchippers much too kind) but AppleScript's
the one that keeps me off those streets so is of greatest personal concern.
I've carried plenty water for AppleScript over the years and defended it
from many attacks, justified and not, but we're way long the point where
I could rationalize all its failings away as "lack of resources" or
"lack of support". I've learned too much myself, solved too many
problems myself, and made too many screwups myself not to recognize the
human factors ultimately undermining and sabotaging AppleScript's best
chance of survival. The Chrises fall into the classic bored corporate
programmer trap of writing code for their own amusement rather to meet
users' actual needs; they may be competent maintenance coders, but they
don't do design or support for shit. And Sal - a born salesman if ever
there was one - should be growing valuable friendships both inside and
outside Apple, educating and evangelizing everyone on the technologies
involved, and getting others to do as much of the humdrum
platform-growing work for them as possible. Yet the AS team has hardly
any friends inside or outside Apple, barely speaks to its own supporters
never mind anyone else, and so gets run roughshod over by other Apple
groups only too happy to offload their own work when they should be
doing it themselves.
It's a downward slide that's not going to fix itself; and Sal's team
doesn't have remotely enough influence or resources to fix by
themselves. It's going to take a whole boatload of people, working
cooperatively towards a common goal in which they all genuinely
*believe*. Most of all it needs programmers, because they're the ones
who build the apps and tools that actually make this technology useful.
So every year the AS team fails to win those programmers over puts
AppleScript, and everything we users have invested in it, one step
closer to the grave.
I've said it often before: if you want to turn programmers into
enthusiastic scriptable app developers and supporters, the first thing
you do is turn them into enthusiastic scriptable app *users*. And I know
it's doable, because I've been out there in the trenches changing such
attitudes myself, turning programmers who've traditionally hated
everything AppleScript into programmers who still hate AppleScript the
crappy-ass language but absolutely adore "AppleScript" the wonderfully
powerful and effective desktop automation technology. So perhaps the
real key question isn't even "Why is so much of the AS team's technical
output so lousy?", but "Why is the AS team's people handling skills so
unbelievably atrocious that the one of the two greatest cross-language
Apple event automation evangelists they've ever had cost-free is
dropping shit-bombs instead, while the other has abandoned it completely?"
Figure out why I'm not "The Shane Stanley of JavaScript" by now, and
perhaps *you* should be the one running Apple's Automation department.
:) Like I say, the trick to great success isn't working hard yourself,
it's tricking others into doing all the hard work for you, stealing
shamelessly, and taking all the credit for success. After all, isn't
that what Automation's All About? <g>
Cheers,
has
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
AppleScript-Users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
Archives: http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users
This email sent to email@hidden