On Sun, 15 Jul 2012, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Ok. I have to rise to this :-) > [...] > See, I'm an engineer, but I write a LOT for a living - proposals, > papers, presentations, etc. When I'm trying to think through a logical > presentation of information, a good outliner helps a lot. Worrying about > formatting codes just gets in the way - it's a distraction. If I'm > co-authoring, then commenting tools help a lot. > > The point is getting ideas across. The tools are just there to help, > not get in the way.
All right. The differences we have between us seem to stem from different surroundings and different timeframe lenght each of us needs to keep in mind. I definitely don't have to communicate with coworkers as much as you do. > > If I would have to point at guilty, the "current sorry state of personal > > computing" has been caused by making things too easy for novice, without > > accounting for needs of seasoned users. We are novices only once, after > > that we are not anymore. The "hardness" you write about is, from my POV, > > just dumbing down the tool, so one has to use dumber and dumber ways of > > working with it. No surprise it gets hard as one's experience rises. > > The original topic started with: Rrrrright, I really like to jump into offtopic threads and, by law of motion they can only slide more because of this :-). > "45 years after Engelbart's demo, we have a read-only web and Microsoft Word > 2011, a gulf between "users" and "programmers" that can't be wider, and the > scariest part is that most people have been indoctrinated long enough to > realize there could be alternatives." I'm not sure how to understand this. The demo is probably somewhere on youtube and when I have time I will try to watch it. However, neither wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos nor wired: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/12/dayintech_1209 mention anything about programming by user. They say there were windows, mouse, hypertexts, videoconferencing and other similar stuff. Not a word about programming. So perhaps a gap between users and programers was already well established by then. > "Naturally, this is just history repeating itself (a la pre-Gutenberg scribes, > Victorian plumbers). But my question is, what can we learn from these > historical precedences, in order to to consciously to design our escape path. > A revolution? An evolution? An education?" This, again, I don't get. As long as a classical PC is with us, programing can be done by everybody. No barriers other than having time and persistence. With medieval scribes, one had to have access to calf skins to write on them. With Victorian plumbers, I don't understand what they are doing in the story? It will be very different if PC reverts into workstation niche (and prices). Everybody will be using some iphone/ipad derivative which will be only allowed to download code from some predefined location, no programing by user allowed. Certainly a dream of some manufacturers, AFAIK. Escape path, revolution etc? The whole paragraph does not compute for me. > And seems to have turned into something about needing to recreate the > homebrew computing milieu, and everyone learning to program - and > perhaps "why don't more people know how to program?" Ehem, I gave my opinion on this already. Not enough people want to know. At least, not enough to matter in case marketoids decide to change the world of computing into petrified forrest. > My response (to the original question) is that folks who want to write, > may want something more flexible (programmable) than Word, but somehow > turning everone into c coders doesn't seem to be the answer. More > flexible tools (e.g., HyperCard, spreadsheets) are more of an answer - > and that's a challenge to those of us who develop tools. Turning > writers, or mathematicians, or artists into coders is simply a recipe > for bad content AND bad code. I agree programming requires some devotion to be any good. Once again, there are options other than Word+VBA for those in need to do something. I think they are already quite flexible, unless one expects telepathic abilities from them :-). And C is not the only option out there - however, options that I would like to consider are not so much different. For me, flexible tool is not the one having more graphical options but one having less of them. Just as with natural language, I have more expressive power by learning new words, not by pointing stuff with my finger and groaning. Thus the user-programmer divide will not be closed as long as the user is unwilling to learn to speak. I know, I know. I am again in "program=text" mode. But perhaps I am right about this. [...] > > Oh wait a little. All I want is e-paper based tablet... > > Personally, I find a Nook is a lot better way to read a book than a > laptop. And if I want to draw something, I'd LOVE an e-paper based > tablet with a pen (what ever happened to pentops, by the way?). Well, my small objection to Nook (we talk about Color?) is lit up display. As a rule of thumb, I stay away from permamently lit up things (other than computer monitors, of course) and I hate glassy cover (actually I fight with urge to crush them everytime I see them). Even Sun shines only half a day, so what kind of derailed mind could come up with idea of display that always shines when I look at it? Of course it was the same derailed persons who thought we would use cellphones inside buildings during days, and outside only by night :-). Some poor vampire admirers, obviously. I hope one of them gets better and finally designs something I could like. I opted for e-paper based PocketBook 622. So far, so good. No pen in this model, next time I will know I want a pen. Pentops - you mean a pen with computer inside, transfer handwriting to laptop? Seems like a killer, and there were some people interested. I imagine this, paired with a cell phone (rather than heavy and bulky laptop), would do quite a shaking. Not sure why the idea didn't catch up. Either there was unnamed technical problem or some pundit did decision based on his favourite films, like above. > I'll come back to saying there's a middle ground. Spreadsheets are > really a good example - the number of things people do with spreadsheet > and macros is pretty phenomenal - and it is coding, with powerful tools, > not a "little carpenter" toolbox. Nor is Macsyma a toy - it's a > powerful language for expressing mathematical thought. By a strange twist of fate, I have Maxima manual open in one of my Opera tabs. However, if a world started to depend on "apps" made with spreadsheet, I would have researched an exit trajectory like mad. From what I have read, spreadsheet is a very poor programming environment, giving way to unnoticable errors and other such stuff (based on my knowledge about it, I couldn't agree more). Not a way to go, at least not for me. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
