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There's a chicken-and-egg problem with scripting support in desktop applications: if more of the customers were comfortable writing small programs, the companie

There's a chicken-and-egg problem with scripting support in desktop applications: if more of the customers were comfortable writing small programs, the companies creating them would see more value in providing decent scripting interfaces. For example the Adobe applications like Photoshop and Illustrator have obviously had a fair amount of effort put into the scripting interfaces at some point, but it's fallen short. They've done the 90% of the work which is embedding a sort-of-javascript engine and exposing the applications' functionality to it; they just need to do the other 90% to make it practical to maintain and share scripts, and glue them up to the UI, and so on.

pfranz 9y ago
I feel like my industry might be a window to that. I work in visual effects. Almost all of our applications (Maya, Nuke, Houdini) have a built-in Python interpreter and every facility over probably 20 people use it extensively all the way up to the Pixars, Wetas, and ILMs. Often the application UI is written in Python and could be fully customized, including adding/modifying menus, they have a console, and a shelf (for small, clickable scripts). They even have a cool think where you can see it print out the commands that get executed when you click buttons in the UI. I've also been responsible for scripting in Photoshop and it's miserable (not just because of Javascript). I have junior artists ask if they should learn Python/programming or focus on their discipline and my recommendation is, "if you think scripting is going to be one of your primary responsibilities, learn it. If not, focus on getting better at your discipline." My experience in working with artists is that they have no idea what goes on under the hood. The amount of effort needed to even write simple scripts is enormous. There are artists who can crack open a console and write or modify a simple script, but more often than not they came from a solid technical background it's just no longer their day-to-day job. Even in those programs, there's not just the hurdle of knowing what a variable, loop, or string is, but looking up the API for the application, how things are structured, and troubleshooting. I think Excel is the most ideal example you'll ever get. The feedback loop is tight and there's a gradual slope to some insane programming. While there are a lot of amazing Excel gurus, the average person using Excel may not even need to know what a formula is. Their job is filling out and reading boxes that were put together by a manager. I don't see this changing in 20 years.

pfranz 9y ago

I feel like my industry might be a window to that. I work in visual effects. Almost all of our applications (Maya, Nuke, Houdini) have a built-in Python interpreter and every facility over probably 20 people use it extensively all the way up to the Pixars, Wetas, and ILMs. Often the application UI is written in Python and could be fully customized, including adding/modifying menus, they have a console, and a shelf (for small, clickable scripts). They even have a cool think where you can see it print out the commands that get executed when you click buttons in the UI. I've also been responsible for scripting in Photoshop and it's miserable (not just because of Javascript). I have junior artists ask if they should learn Python/programming or focus on their discipline and my recommendation is, "if you think scripting is going to be one of your primary responsibilities, learn it. If not, focus on getting better at your discipline." My experience in working with artists is that they have no idea what goes on under the hood. The amount of effort needed to even write simple scripts is enormous. There are artists who can crack open a console and write or modify a simple script, but more often than not they came from a solid technical background it's just no longer their day-to-day job. Even in those programs, there's not just the hurdle of knowing what a variable, loop, or string is, but looking up the API for the application, how things are structured, and troubleshooting. I think Excel is the most ideal example you'll ever get. The feedback loop is tight and there's a gradual slope to some insane programming. While there are a lot of amazing Excel gurus, the average person using Excel may not even need to know what a formula is. Their job is filling out and reading boxes that were put together by a manager. I don't see this changing in 20 years.