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> There is structural integrity to OSX, but it’s like a civil engineering project where the integrity is gradually being retrofitted over time. Despite the en

by scroot 5y ago

> There is structural integrity to OSX, but it’s like a civil engineering project where the integrity is gradually being retrofitted over time. Despite the engineered "user-friendliness" of the OS, it still suffers from a simple problem, which is this: how can a user make a button for themselves? There are buttons all over the system. Users know how to interact with them. But the only consistently supported way to make a "real" button is to learn a full low-level language and all the dev tools and classes that go with it. That is not good design.

zepto 5y ago
I agree with the sentiment, and indeed I’ve been disappointed with the rate of progress in this area by Apple, however they clearly are slowly moving in that direction. But to me the question this raises is - do you think anyone has done better, and if so who?
- scroot 5y ago
  > But to me the question this raises is - do you think anyone has done better, and if so who?. Yes. Apple in the past, for one. When they included Hypercard free with every Macintosh and also began integrating Applescript into the core of their OS, they were taking steps in the right direction. Also, as you mentioned, Smalltalk and similar systems also had a good trajectory in this regard. The incentives and visions of computing have changed drastically since the 80s.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Hmm. I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. They are indicative of a direction, but neither were scalable. Shortcuts seems better than either of them. I see smalltalk as a great vision, but the fact is hasn’t gone further isn’t accidental. It’s certainly not easier to build an app in Squeak, for example, than it is to use XCode and build one using SwiftUI. I am personally of the opinion that nobody has actually done better in reality, even if they have a preferable vision.
    - scroot 5y ago
      > I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. The way they worked holistically on their systems at the time and brought users into the fold was certainly better than what we have now. I don't know of anything at present that is equivalent to that relationship -- on OSX or any of the Unicies, for that matter. To be clear I'm not suggesting a Hypercard clone for the modern era, but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Regular users as authors is one part of that. Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. To me the reasons for this are obvious.
      - zepto 5y ago
        I don’t see how there was anything holistic about HyperCard. It wasn’t really much different from Visual Basic except for the Card and Link metaphor, which was good for creating scaffolding without having to start coding first. Database builders like FileMaker or multimedia tools like Macromedia director, and Flash, are in the same family of tool. Even PowerPoint. There was certainly nothing specially integrated about it. It was just a tool. The card metaphor was a good way to build quick interactive presentations, and that was better for a lot of tasks than breaking out a code editor, but that’s all it was. AppleScript is a ridiculously awkward programming language, coupled with a cumbersome way for apps to publish an API, along with some simple coordination primitives. You could imagine a great programming language and a simple mechanism for apps to expose their functionality, but this was not it. > but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Right. My point is that there is nothing these old technologies do that isn’t done way better today. The spirit, I agree, is lost. > Regular users as authors is one part of that. I agree with this too. > Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. Except for the giant stack of programming languages, creative tools, etc, all of which are vastly more end user programmable than anything from the HyperCard or even smalltalk era. Think about blender, Pythonista, gnuradio, Swift playgrounds. Programmability is everywhere. > To me the reasons for this are obvious. That’s where we differ. I think there are enough people who want this thing that if it was that easy we’d have it by now. We can argue that it’s not in Apple’s interest to make this thing (although I think that’s false, and they are trying as hard any one to make programming more accessible). Even if that were true, it doesn’t explain why things are no better on Linux. The spirit of these things is some kind of ubiquitous and powerful and yet progressively accessible programmability and composability of the entire system. That just isn’t something that they actually offered, even though they gestured towards it. It turns out to be a hard problem.
snazz 5y ago
Shortcuts has really taken off in the last year or two on iOS and I think it provides the most user-friendly way of creating a button that automates something tedious. Certainly a lot of its popularity is owed to the ability to create custom Home Screen app icons with iOS 14, but it's great if that was the spark that encouraged people to explore how they can automate their devices. Later this year Shortcuts will finally arrive on macOS as well—I bet it will get a lot more use than Automator or AppleScript does.

by scroot 5y ago

zepto 5y ago

I agree with the sentiment, and indeed I’ve been disappointed with the rate of progress in this area by Apple, however they clearly are slowly moving in that direction. But to me the question this raises is - do you think anyone has done better, and if so who?

scroot 5y ago
> But to me the question this raises is - do you think anyone has done better, and if so who?. Yes. Apple in the past, for one. When they included Hypercard free with every Macintosh and also began integrating Applescript into the core of their OS, they were taking steps in the right direction. Also, as you mentioned, Smalltalk and similar systems also had a good trajectory in this regard. The incentives and visions of computing have changed drastically since the 80s.
- zepto 5y ago
  Hmm. I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. They are indicative of a direction, but neither were scalable. Shortcuts seems better than either of them. I see smalltalk as a great vision, but the fact is hasn’t gone further isn’t accidental. It’s certainly not easier to build an app in Squeak, for example, than it is to use XCode and build one using SwiftUI. I am personally of the opinion that nobody has actually done better in reality, even if they have a preferable vision.
  - scroot 5y ago
    > I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. The way they worked holistically on their systems at the time and brought users into the fold was certainly better than what we have now. I don't know of anything at present that is equivalent to that relationship -- on OSX or any of the Unicies, for that matter. To be clear I'm not suggesting a Hypercard clone for the modern era, but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Regular users as authors is one part of that. Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. To me the reasons for this are obvious.
    - zepto 5y ago
      I don’t see how there was anything holistic about HyperCard. It wasn’t really much different from Visual Basic except for the Card and Link metaphor, which was good for creating scaffolding without having to start coding first. Database builders like FileMaker or multimedia tools like Macromedia director, and Flash, are in the same family of tool. Even PowerPoint. There was certainly nothing specially integrated about it. It was just a tool. The card metaphor was a good way to build quick interactive presentations, and that was better for a lot of tasks than breaking out a code editor, but that’s all it was. AppleScript is a ridiculously awkward programming language, coupled with a cumbersome way for apps to publish an API, along with some simple coordination primitives. You could imagine a great programming language and a simple mechanism for apps to expose their functionality, but this was not it. > but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Right. My point is that there is nothing these old technologies do that isn’t done way better today. The spirit, I agree, is lost. > Regular users as authors is one part of that. I agree with this too. > Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. Except for the giant stack of programming languages, creative tools, etc, all of which are vastly more end user programmable than anything from the HyperCard or even smalltalk era. Think about blender, Pythonista, gnuradio, Swift playgrounds. Programmability is everywhere. > To me the reasons for this are obvious. That’s where we differ. I think there are enough people who want this thing that if it was that easy we’d have it by now. We can argue that it’s not in Apple’s interest to make this thing (although I think that’s false, and they are trying as hard any one to make programming more accessible). Even if that were true, it doesn’t explain why things are no better on Linux. The spirit of these things is some kind of ubiquitous and powerful and yet progressively accessible programmability and composability of the entire system. That just isn’t something that they actually offered, even though they gestured towards it. It turns out to be a hard problem.

snazz 5y ago

Shortcuts has really taken off in the last year or two on iOS and I think it provides the most user-friendly way of creating a button that automates something tedious. Certainly a lot of its popularity is owed to the ability to create custom Home Screen app icons with iOS 14, but it's great if that was the spark that encouraged people to explore how they can automate their devices. Later this year Shortcuts will finally arrive on macOS as well—I bet it will get a lot more use than Automator or AppleScript does.