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Anyone ever read "The inmates are running the asylum" by Cooper? If this trend of making everyone into a programmer continues, I wonder what user interfaces wil

by afpx 9y ago

Anyone ever read "The inmates are running the asylum" by Cooper? If this trend of making everyone into a programmer continues, I wonder what user interfaces will evolve into. As a side note, recently I've been having more and more unexpected but amusing conversations with my non-programmer friends about things like 'APIs and SDKs'. The business worker has taken over the technical vernacular, and it's leading to some strange contortions of reality.

deleted 9y ago
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vram22 9y ago
>Anyone ever read "The inmates are running the asylum" by Cooper? Ha, good one - at least the book title. (The full title is: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.) I'd read about that book by him (Alan Cooper [1]), but haven't read it yet. But I did buy and read another of his books, About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, some years ago. I thought it was good. It's about user interface design that makes sense for humans. I still remember one point where he said that in a scrollbar, having both the arrows at one end, instead of at opposite ends, makes it more easy to use. IIRC, I mentioned this on HN a while ago in some context, and someone replied that such a scrollbar exists in some GUI toolkit or OS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper https://www.cooper.com/people/alan_cooper https://www.cooper.com/people/alan_cooper The story of how he created Visual Basic and then how Microsoft bought it from him, is also interesting. A few excerpts from the Wikipedia article about him (linked above): [After he left college, he founded one of the first microcomputer software companies.] [In 1975, as the first microcomputers became available, Alan Cooper founded his first company, Structured Systems Group (SSG), in Oakland, California. SSG’s software accounting product, General Ledger, was sold through ads in popular magazines such as Byte and Interface Age. This software was, according to the historical account in Fire in the Valley (by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine), “probably the first serious business software for microcomputers.] [During the 1980s, Alan Cooper authored several business applications including Microphone II for Windows and an early, critical-path project management program called SuperProject. Cooper sold SuperProject to Computer Associates in 1984, where it achieved success in the business-to-business marketplace.] [In 1988, Alan Cooper created a visual programming language (code-named “Ruby”) that allowed Windows users to build “Finder”-like shells. He called it “a shell construction set." After he demonstrated Ruby to Bill Gates, Microsoft purchased it. At the time, Gates commented that the innovation would have a “profound effect” on their entire product line. Microsoft decided not to release the product as a shell for users, but rather to transform it into a professional development tool from their QuickBASIC programming language called Visual Basic, which was widely used for business application development for Windows computers.] [Cooper’s dynamically installable control facility, which became famous as the “VBX” interface, was a well-known component of "Ruby". This innovation allowed any 3rd party developer to write a widget (control) as a DLL, put it in the Visual Basic directory, and Visual Basic would find it, communicate with it, and present it to the user as a seamless part of the program. The widget would appear in the tool palette and appropriate menus, and users could incorporate it into their Visual Basic applications. The invention of the “VBX” interface created an entire new marketplace for vendors of these “dynamically installable controls.” As a result of Cooper’s work, many new software companies were able to deliver Windows software to market in the 1990s.] I'd worked on a few commercial VB projects earlier, and had read about how the VBX innovation (mentioned above) spawned a whole new industry of companies creating third-party controls/widgets. Delphi was probably also made possible because of VB (though there was a chance it could have been invented even if VB had not).

by afpx 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

vram22 9y ago

>Anyone ever read "The inmates are running the asylum" by Cooper? Ha, good one - at least the book title. (The full title is: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.) I'd read about that book by him (Alan Cooper [1]), but haven't read it yet. But I did buy and read another of his books, About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, some years ago. I thought it was good. It's about user interface design that makes sense for humans. I still remember one point where he said that in a scrollbar, having both the arrows at one end, instead of at opposite ends, makes it more easy to use. IIRC, I mentioned this on HN a while ago in some context, and someone replied that such a scrollbar exists in some GUI toolkit or OS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper https://www.cooper.com/people/alan_cooper https://www.cooper.com/people/alan_cooper The story of how he created Visual Basic and then how Microsoft bought it from him, is also interesting. A few excerpts from the Wikipedia article about him (linked above): [After he left college, he founded one of the first microcomputer software companies.] [In 1975, as the first microcomputers became available, Alan Cooper founded his first company, Structured Systems Group (SSG), in Oakland, California. SSG’s software accounting product, General Ledger, was sold through ads in popular magazines such as Byte and Interface Age. This software was, according to the historical account in Fire in the Valley (by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine), “probably the first serious business software for microcomputers.] [During the 1980s, Alan Cooper authored several business applications including Microphone II for Windows and an early, critical-path project management program called SuperProject. Cooper sold SuperProject to Computer Associates in 1984, where it achieved success in the business-to-business marketplace.] [In 1988, Alan Cooper created a visual programming language (code-named “Ruby”) that allowed Windows users to build “Finder”-like shells. He called it “a shell construction set." After he demonstrated Ruby to Bill Gates, Microsoft purchased it. At the time, Gates commented that the innovation would have a “profound effect” on their entire product line. Microsoft decided not to release the product as a shell for users, but rather to transform it into a professional development tool from their QuickBASIC programming language called Visual Basic, which was widely used for business application development for Windows computers.] [Cooper’s dynamically installable control facility, which became famous as the “VBX” interface, was a well-known component of "Ruby". This innovation allowed any 3rd party developer to write a widget (control) as a DLL, put it in the Visual Basic directory, and Visual Basic would find it, communicate with it, and present it to the user as a seamless part of the program. The widget would appear in the tool palette and appropriate menus, and users could incorporate it into their Visual Basic applications. The invention of the “VBX” interface created an entire new marketplace for vendors of these “dynamically installable controls.” As a result of Cooper’s work, many new software companies were able to deliver Windows software to market in the 1990s.] I'd worked on a few commercial VB projects earlier, and had read about how the VBX innovation (mentioned above) spawned a whole new industry of companies creating third-party controls/widgets. Delphi was probably also made possible because of VB (though there was a chance it could have been invented even if VB had not).