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Years ago, we're talking late '80s, I would take normal office workers, with essentially zero computer experience, and have them creating useful applications wi
by commieneko 16y ago
Years ago, we're talking late '80s, I would take normal office workers, with essentially zero computer experience, and have them creating useful applications with Apple's HyperCard in a few weeks. It was tremendously useful, but not with out pitfalls. One worker would make a tool, say a bibliographic utility, another worker would think this is great and get a copy and immediately start making their own modifications and mutation. You can see where this is going...
Still I can see that with better tools and some type of data authority, users could greatly benefit from being able to roll their own apps.
I had hoped that the web would offer the same the same types of opportunities, but web programming quickly became a mess, or more charitably, too complicated for general office workers to program.
- kondro 16y agoOh, that's the other core tenant that normal office workers need to be taught. Source/version control. The amount of issues I've had with exchanging and modifying Excel/Word documents via email with groups of people is uncountable. Some basic understanding of version-controlled file-systems (like git or svn) with users writing actual comments on how they have modified their files would make this type of editing much, much easier.
- commieneko 16y agoSource control for office documents would be great, but git, svn, your favorite flavor goes here, are NOT suitable for general office workers. It's possible some type of shell or scripting interface could be slapped on, but it would need to be so thoroughly tested and bullet proof that you would probably be better to use a tool developed for that environment.
- kondro 16y agoI don't see why not. It isn't rocket surgery. I say, if you employ smart staff, they can learn new things and smart staff always provide more value than cheap staff.