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> More and more non-CS people are learning to program every day. We (the computing people) make this much harder for them than it needs to be. Instead of givin
by scroot 7y ago
> More and more non-CS people are learning to program every day.
We (the computing people) make this much harder for them than it needs to be. Instead of giving them malleable computing systems like Oberon, or Hypercard, Smalltalk, or related, we give them glistening time sharing systems and tell them that "programming" is, really, entering text into a teletype emulator and watching it do things. People are not stupid, but insofar as computing has been dominated by industry and limited by open source, we have given them stupefying options. We have better examples from the past and should know better.
- k__ 7y agoI don't think this is true. If the systems, you are talking about, were so great, they would be used by the masses. There are much more non-technical people out there.
- xkriva11 7y agoCan you be more specific if you have tried at least one of them?
- k__ 7y agoI used Smalltalk and Flash, but what does this change? I mean, the problem here isn't that I have no idea if these systems are better than the stuff we use currently or worse than that. The problem here is that they simply aren't used by many people.
- xkriva11 7y agoLack of popularity of these systems has often different reasons than the technical aspects but your comment sounded like the judgment of someone who dismisses some technology as second-rate just because it is not popular.