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You could make about a trillion dollars if, instead of asking people to write Python, you just gave them a WYSIWYG and let them build web apps by pointing and c

You could make about a trillion dollars if, instead of asking people to write Python, you just gave them a WYSIWYG and let them build web apps by pointing and clicking like in MS Publisher/Powerpoint. Literally everyone in the world would buy it to make their own web pages. I get that nerds like to write code, but it is really depressing that we still can't just point and click and share content on the internet, we need to hire a nerd to write some special language just to make some text boxes and images show up on a screen. I mean, it's 2023. We have rovers discovering ice on freaking Mars. But just making a web page by pointing and clicking is impossible, or limited only to specific web hosting companies.

Epa095 4y ago
Many have tried the lowcode. Appfarm. Anvil. Even Microsoft power platform. Only the last make "trillions", and its not their low code platform which does it.
qsort 4y ago
Nerds like to write code, as you put it, because it's easier than the alternative. Seen from the other side, it's amazing to what lengths people will go to avoid learning some very light scripting. Historically the 4GL/nocode/lowcode movement has been a miserable failure, and not for lack of attempts to push that idea down people's throats.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  > it's amazing to what lengths people will go to avoid learning some very light scripting It's amazing that a person would want to do more work for a computer, rather than the other way around. > Historically the 4GL/nocode/lowcode movement has been a miserable failure Because they were created by people with no imagination, to fit into a paradigm that is inherently flawed but makes lots of money. MS Publisher was created 32 years ago. It still works great. Anyone can sit down and create and share mixed media by pointing and clicking. But all the techies in the world can't fathom how to make the same exact thing work over a hyper text protocol. Because they have no imagination, and prefer to play with their legos rather than make useful tools that regular humans can use. The only reason web pages are so complicated is the simpler and easier to use solution isn't sexy. Techies want their tech to be complicated, because they like all the bells and whistles and knobs and syntax and grammar and frameworks. It gratifies their need to keep reconfiguring their legos to make new toys. They like the ego boost of believing that all this is necessary and they are some kind of geniuses doing great work. When really it's all just a poorly designed layer cake of crap that keeps them in money to buy more toys. It's like how cities are full of streets designed for 2-ton balls of steel and wire and a continuously exploding mechanical machine. The city's design - and the vehicles - are needlessly complex, expensive, and resource-wasting. But we don't fix it, because fixing it is more work than maintaining the status quo, and there's money in the status quo.
deleted 4y ago
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aatd86 4y ago
Frontpage and dreamweaver! Haha. Wysiwyg. Joke aside, some say that with AI... Writing code is getting ever easier... Even easier than using a nocode tool.
amai 4y ago
Most graphical tools with WYSIWYG miss version control and the ability to show diffs between versions. But this is very important for debugging web apps and also for collaboration between developers. Also if the logic is more complex than a simple If-Else, you can express that much shorter and more efficient with text instead of a graphical representation of some tree. But note there is one area where GUIa are used for coding: game development. But Unreal 5, Unity etc. don't exactly have a simple GUI.

Epa095 4y ago

Many have tried the lowcode. Appfarm. Anvil. Even Microsoft power platform. Only the last make "trillions", and its not their low code platform which does it.

qsort 4y ago

Nerds like to write code, as you put it, because it's easier than the alternative. Seen from the other side, it's amazing to what lengths people will go to avoid learning some very light scripting. Historically the 4GL/nocode/lowcode movement has been a miserable failure, and not for lack of attempts to push that idea down people's throats.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago
> it's amazing to what lengths people will go to avoid learning some very light scripting It's amazing that a person would want to do more work for a computer, rather than the other way around. > Historically the 4GL/nocode/lowcode movement has been a miserable failure Because they were created by people with no imagination, to fit into a paradigm that is inherently flawed but makes lots of money. MS Publisher was created 32 years ago. It still works great. Anyone can sit down and create and share mixed media by pointing and clicking. But all the techies in the world can't fathom how to make the same exact thing work over a hyper text protocol. Because they have no imagination, and prefer to play with their legos rather than make useful tools that regular humans can use. The only reason web pages are so complicated is the simpler and easier to use solution isn't sexy. Techies want their tech to be complicated, because they like all the bells and whistles and knobs and syntax and grammar and frameworks. It gratifies their need to keep reconfiguring their legos to make new toys. They like the ego boost of believing that all this is necessary and they are some kind of geniuses doing great work. When really it's all just a poorly designed layer cake of crap that keeps them in money to buy more toys. It's like how cities are full of streets designed for 2-ton balls of steel and wire and a continuously exploding mechanical machine. The city's design - and the vehicles - are needlessly complex, expensive, and resource-wasting. But we don't fix it, because fixing it is more work than maintaining the status quo, and there's money in the status quo.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aatd86 4y ago

Frontpage and dreamweaver! Haha. Wysiwyg. Joke aside, some say that with AI... Writing code is getting ever easier... Even easier than using a nocode tool.

amai 4y ago

Most graphical tools with WYSIWYG miss version control and the ability to show diffs between versions. But this is very important for debugging web apps and also for collaboration between developers. Also if the logic is more complex than a simple If-Else, you can express that much shorter and more efficient with text instead of a graphical representation of some tree. But note there is one area where GUIa are used for coding: game development. But Unreal 5, Unity etc. don't exactly have a simple GUI.