On 18 May 2008, at 17:41, Jens Alfke wrote:
On 18 May '08, at 4:33 AM, Julius Guzy wrote:
Apple has been less celebrated for the humanity of its programming
interface having, in my experience of Macs from the Lisa onwards,
seemingly taken the attitude that its programmers were hobbyists,
geeks essentially, who because of their enthusiasm would
successfully negociate their way into the machine's innards.
"Hobbyists"? I think "professionals" is more accurate — especially
since in the early days of the Mac you had to spend hundreds of
dollars to become a developer and get access to tools and
documentation.
well there you are. Precisely.
I can see your point about obsessive hackers having the stamina to
overcome complicated APIs, but any platform vendor's main objective
in developer tools is to target professional developers who will
create the products that make the platform attractive to customers.
"Professional" doesn't necessarily imply a big company; I refer
equally to startups and indie outfits, anyone seriously devoted to
creating a product.
Like me for instance.
I have to say I find this whole discussion frustrating. The
attitude of some people seems to be that writing computer programs,
of arbitrary complexity, should be as easy as using a word
processor. That's a Utopian goal at best, and more generally just
naïve.
To my knowledge during these discussions nobody has suggested this
least of all I. There is nothing about programming computers that
does not require a fair bit of knowledge of how to get around the
machine. I do not think it naive of me to raise serious questions
regarding usability given that i have made huge and increasingly
successful efforts to get into this system so I can do some heavy
duty programming. From that point of view the debate has been quite
informative regarding the documentation and how to use it, even
though I still find it exceptonally hard.
Of course we should be trying to make the APIs and tools and
documentation more useable; that's a constant task, and a very
difficult one, and one Apple's doing a good job at. (The complexity
under the hood is terrifying, and it's already been covered up
enough that in an hour an experienced developer can throw together
an app that fifteen years ago would have sold for $100.)
Well if it were doing as good a job as you think it is then I for one
would not have lived through the nightmare of the last five or six
months struggle.
Face it, any sort of serious creative endeavor is hard! There's no
way around it. And the hardest part is learning the techniques and
tools. If you wanted to build a robot,
done it
play Vivaldi on the violin
can't
, design a house,
done it
paint landscapes,
sometimes
or cure Ebola,
next week
you'd have to accept that it would take months or years of serious
study,
absolutely!!! years and years
that the tools and documentation would sometimes be hard to use,
and you'd have to put up with frustration before you mastered the
skills.
been there, done it , still have not mastered the skills bit.
Why on earth is writing the best GUI applications in the world
supposed to be trivial by comparison? Maybe I'm taking this too
personally, but I sense a subtext that some people think the task
of software design itself is somewhat trivial, more like
programming a VCR than like architecture or painting or chemistry.
"Problems worthy of attack
Prove their worth by hitting back." [Piet Hein]
What have I said that should make anyone suppose I think designing
software is trivial?
Julius
http://juliuspaintings.co.uk
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