Re: cocoa-dev digest, Vol 1 #956 - 15 msgs
Re: cocoa-dev digest, Vol 1 #956 - 15 msgs
- Subject: Re: cocoa-dev digest, Vol 1 #956 - 15 msgs
- From: Simon Stapleton <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:15:58 +0000 (GMT)
Quoting Georg Tuparev <email@hidden>:
>
Hi Simon,
>
>
On Tuesday, December 11, 2001, at 09:22 AM, Simon Stapleton wrote:
>
>
> Programming is not a task for idiots. It requires thought and
>
> understanding. It's a serious undertaking.
>
>
Hmmm. You are right here - of course - but if you are right, 90% of
>
this and all other mailing list members should change their
>
profession (or have no profession at all). I'm sure this will be
>
good for both the quality and the productivity of the products done
>
by the remaining 10%.
Ah, but here we disagree (and veer wildly offtopic, laughing).
I really don't think there are many idiots on this list. There are
new programmers, but few idiots. New programmers can, and do, learn
how to do things properly. Idiots will never learn, and will never
try to. The will expect the system to do everything for them.
My point is that tools and languages that obfuscate and / or hide the
implementation details do little to help people learn. They may make
it easier to knock together yet another 'hello world with menus',
but, IMO, make it _harder_ for those new programmers to actually make
something useful. Well, until Microsoft come up with a 'Whizzy
option trading system wizard' and a 'Full-on aircraft engineering
system wizard' and ... well, you get the point.
Point-and-click cameras versus fully manual SLRs are a case in point
here. With a fully manual camera, you have to select aperture,
shutter speed, focus manually, etc. With a point-and-click camera,
you just point and - well, click. But the results from most people's
point and click are horrible. Badly framed, shot against the sun,
busy backgrounds drowning out the subject, all sorts of ugly photos.
I would argue that this is due to the lack of understanding of the
task. Professional photographers can produce very nice results from
point-and-click cameras, but it's because they understand the
basics. Ack, I'm veering offtopic here.
What am I trying to say here? I guess it's that idiot-proof tools
should only ever be used by non-idiots.
Or that the idiots will never progress beyond the stage of newbie-
ness, whereas the professionals (even the 'newbie' professionals)
will, so why bother making tools for idiots? They'll only give up at
the point where it becomes hard anyway.
This, of course, is not knocking either Cocoa or the tools that come
with it. I think they have the balance about right.
But then, like I said, I started out with embedded 6502 assembly,
moved onto 68000, thence to mainframes, then *nix. There weren't
ever any point-and-drool tools on platforms I used. I don't code for
windows, never have, never will.
Simon
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