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I see it that way. That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard, Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was ju

I see it that way. That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard, Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was just expected that development software had a graphical interface builder for developers to use. (Heck, even IDEs for really difficult languages, like C++, had them.) But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers" create programming tools, they don't spend even 10 milliseconds thinking about accessibility or usability or user experience-- look at Git (created in 2005) as a perfect example. There was a time when terrible software like Git was mocked and derided, not praised. So while back in 1998, anybody could program their own recipe database with drag&drop and a little scripting in HyperCard or Access, now in 2016 they can't. They could try perhaps in one of the "leftover" easy environments, like WinForms, but it's about an order of magnitude more difficult to learn, and if they want to share their solution with someone, they have to learn Git which is about two orders of magnitude more difficult to learn. The world you grew up in no longer exists, and we move further from that ideal every year. Sorry, but the "high priesthood" concept (make everything difficult and annoying so we can demand more salary) won in our industry, and it won decades ago.

protomikron 10y ago
So, I had to learn some basic Access in my CS class in school around ~2000, and for me it was an absolute nightmare that I did not grasp (I was a teenager and had no coding experience). Now I am a developer and can handle direct SQL and in retrospective I think it is easier to setup sqlite and learn basic SQL than learning MS Access. > But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers" create programming tools, they don't spend even 10 milliseconds thinking about accessibility or usability or user experience-- look at Git (created in 2005) as a perfect example. There was a time when terrible software like Git was mocked and derided, not praised. I think they crapped over those tools, because these tools got the abstraction wrong. They are in complexity between spreadsheet software like Excel and "real" databases that speak SQL. There just aren't enough use cases where you go in-between there, so as an expert in Access you can't solve many problems, especially as you are tied to the Access stack. @Git-Rant: The problem git solves is just non-trivial, so git itself has some learning curve.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  > I think they crapped over those tools, because these tools got the abstraction wrong. If you identify a problem in a useful tool, the correct response isn't "throw it into the garbage and never make a tool anything like it ever again!" The solution is to research and iterate and try to fix the problem. The Wright Flyer didn't have much range. The Wright's solution wasn't "let's give up on creating airplanes forever!" We'll never know if Access could be made better, because development on it stopped. And in any case, for the point I'm making, it doesn't matter if Access is a perfect, or even a good tool. The point I'm making is that he developers of Access had a clear vision of how to make software development easier for the average person that now no longer exists. Maybe they weren't good at achieving that vision, but they had it. Modern software developers, by-and-large, do not. (HyperCard's a far better example, since it had the same vision and also more successfully executed on it.) > The problem git solves is just non-trivial, so git itself has some learning curve. Microsoft Word solves the same problem Git does with its "Track Changes" feature and is far easier to use. I'm not saying that "Track Changes" is sufficient for software development purposes, but it certainly points to a few obvious ideas that could make source control software far better. But of course Git has none of that. It doesn't even try. It's simply bad software. EDIT: BTW, the problem with Git isn't that it's too complex, the problem is that it's far too simple. It implements a few abstractions, then forces the user to deal with them even though those abstractions don't resemble human thought processes even slightly. And for the record, Subversion solved the exact same problem and was far more usable. It also had more features. And was much easier to create GUIs for. Basically, it was better than Git in every measure that matters to me. And it was bad software. But it was way better than Git.
anildash 10y ago
This nails it — coming of age as a coder in that era really informs my perspective on how we could make more accessible tools today.
facorreia 10y ago
The world I grew up on didn't have HyperCard, Filemaker or Access. I wrote code (as opposed to dragging and dropping, which I couldn't, because there weren't mouses our GUIs). I used primitive text editors to write BASIC, COBOL, C and Assembly code and I printed it on paper to better understand the whole program. I typed programs from listings on magazines. All of that as a teenager. The tools we have now, and the libraries and learning resources (like YouTube) make it that much easier, not harder, for someone to learn and get started.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  Ok? It's "easier" in that it doesn't cost money, I'll grant you that. It's not "easier" in the sense that development tools are more accessible, discoverable, or usable than they were a decade ago. How many of those YouTube videos only exist because the tools they're teaching have terrible usability?
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  It's the scope (see my other comment). When you learned it was possible to create and sell a commercial product by learning 1 simple language with no frameworks and no rest apis. That's just not possibly today.
redindian75 10y ago
Totally agree. GUI is derided as a child's toy and command line is the only "real" way. Polymer started working on a GUI builder, and finally went with a command line interface where we need to type mkdir, --g serve 0.0.0.0 sorts of commands. As a designer playing with concepts, this puts me in a totally different kind of mindspace and make me worry about arcane commands, not UX processes or concepts.

protomikron 10y ago

So, I had to learn some basic Access in my CS class in school around ~2000, and for me it was an absolute nightmare that I did not grasp (I was a teenager and had no coding experience). Now I am a developer and can handle direct SQL and in retrospective I think it is easier to setup sqlite and learn basic SQL than learning MS Access. > But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers" create programming tools, they don't spend even 10 milliseconds thinking about accessibility or usability or user experience-- look at Git (created in 2005) as a perfect example. There was a time when terrible software like Git was mocked and derided, not praised. I think they crapped over those tools, because these tools got the abstraction wrong. They are in complexity between spreadsheet software like Excel and "real" databases that speak SQL. There just aren't enough use cases where you go in-between there, so as an expert in Access you can't solve many problems, especially as you are tied to the Access stack. @Git-Rant: The problem git solves is just non-trivial, so git itself has some learning curve.

blakeyrat 10y ago
> I think they crapped over those tools, because these tools got the abstraction wrong. If you identify a problem in a useful tool, the correct response isn't "throw it into the garbage and never make a tool anything like it ever again!" The solution is to research and iterate and try to fix the problem. The Wright Flyer didn't have much range. The Wright's solution wasn't "let's give up on creating airplanes forever!" We'll never know if Access could be made better, because development on it stopped. And in any case, for the point I'm making, it doesn't matter if Access is a perfect, or even a good tool. The point I'm making is that he developers of Access had a clear vision of how to make software development easier for the average person that now no longer exists. Maybe they weren't good at achieving that vision, but they had it. Modern software developers, by-and-large, do not. (HyperCard's a far better example, since it had the same vision and also more successfully executed on it.) > The problem git solves is just non-trivial, so git itself has some learning curve. Microsoft Word solves the same problem Git does with its "Track Changes" feature and is far easier to use. I'm not saying that "Track Changes" is sufficient for software development purposes, but it certainly points to a few obvious ideas that could make source control software far better. But of course Git has none of that. It doesn't even try. It's simply bad software. EDIT: BTW, the problem with Git isn't that it's too complex, the problem is that it's far too simple. It implements a few abstractions, then forces the user to deal with them even though those abstractions don't resemble human thought processes even slightly. And for the record, Subversion solved the exact same problem and was far more usable. It also had more features. And was much easier to create GUIs for. Basically, it was better than Git in every measure that matters to me. And it was bad software. But it was way better than Git.

anildash 10y ago

This nails it — coming of age as a coder in that era really informs my perspective on how we could make more accessible tools today.

facorreia 10y ago

The world I grew up on didn't have HyperCard, Filemaker or Access. I wrote code (as opposed to dragging and dropping, which I couldn't, because there weren't mouses our GUIs). I used primitive text editors to write BASIC, COBOL, C and Assembly code and I printed it on paper to better understand the whole program. I typed programs from listings on magazines. All of that as a teenager. The tools we have now, and the libraries and learning resources (like YouTube) make it that much easier, not harder, for someone to learn and get started.

blakeyrat 10y ago
Ok? It's "easier" in that it doesn't cost money, I'll grant you that. It's not "easier" in the sense that development tools are more accessible, discoverable, or usable than they were a decade ago. How many of those YouTube videos only exist because the tools they're teaching have terrible usability?
WhitneyLand 10y ago
It's the scope (see my other comment). When you learned it was possible to create and sell a commercial product by learning 1 simple language with no frameworks and no rest apis. That's just not possibly today.

redindian75 10y ago

Totally agree. GUI is derided as a child's toy and command line is the only "real" way. Polymer started working on a GUI builder, and finally went with a command line interface where we need to type mkdir, --g serve 0.0.0.0 sorts of commands. As a designer playing with concepts, this puts me in a totally different kind of mindspace and make me worry about arcane commands, not UX processes or concepts.