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I should just mention Amy, that I love your work. Twistori is so cool. But my point is mostly that, despite the bullshit, Mathematica is radically more powerfu

I should just mention Amy, that I love your work. Twistori is so cool. But my point is mostly that, despite the bullshit, Mathematica is radically more powerful for building user interfaces (up to a certain complexity) than anything I've seen. The self-hype hasn't exactly toned down over time either, so I'm less certain it's really the bad omen you make of it.

Retric 18y ago
I think in the back of most developers heads is a little voice that says "My GUI tool set sucks" that most programmers ignore. People seemed to hate VB 6.0 because it was easy to use which is stupid.
ahoyhere 18y ago
Dani, I'm really glad you like Twistori. I'm also glad if what you say about the eating-own-bullshit is not a problem at Wolfram Research. (But, last I saw, Mathematica itself had a horrible interface, beyond the language itself.) But, on the other hand, I must always strenuously object when someone talks about "building" user interfaces as if it's a matter of how easily one can plug widgets together. Which is what this article is about.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  Maybe it's a problem of language. Perhaps 'user-interface' is the wrong phrase for what Mathematica enables. It seems closer to 'interactive exploration'. Mathematica is really intended for general purpose exploration, and in that task, as well as many others, a 'hacked together' GUI made out of a few widgets is orders of magnitude more accessible than the raw code. It's not beautiful, necessarily, and it's not necessarily well-designed. It's not likely to replace the detailed, careful work of master designers. But it does succeed at placing extraordinary power at one's fingertips. When the elements simply work together, and the data can be simply, easily, and quickly plugged into to a display function and a manipulate function in a line or two, it opens really exciting new possibilities.
  - ahoyhere 18y ago
    Sure, I agree with you. Makeshift interfaces surely have their place and I was duly impressed by the demos. They are fucking cool, and cliché, I'm not typically interested in higher math unless it's showing me insights related to me earning money. But. This is all well and good, unless you title linkbait "Why Spend More than Five Minutes on a GUI?". It wasn't "Build a Nifty Mathematical Experimentation GUI in 5 Minutes in Mathematica," or even "Build a Nifty GUI in 5 Minutes in Mathematica," or "Explore Math! 5 Minute GUI," any of which would have been accurate and still interesting. Instead, it appeals directly to the base (and incorrect) belief that so many developers have, that UI is an unimportant afterthought that can be dispensed with, if they only find the right combination of readymade widgets. In 5 minutes! Ugh.
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      nods Okay. My bad for the title. I just used the title of the article itself. It didn't occur to me that it would provoke, but I see that amply now.
      - ahoyhere 18y ago
        Oh, I didn't mean YOU you. I meant the original author. :)

Retric 18y ago

I think in the back of most developers heads is a little voice that says "My GUI tool set sucks" that most programmers ignore. People seemed to hate VB 6.0 because it was easy to use which is stupid.

ahoyhere 18y ago

Dani, I'm really glad you like Twistori. I'm also glad if what you say about the eating-own-bullshit is not a problem at Wolfram Research. (But, last I saw, Mathematica itself had a horrible interface, beyond the language itself.) But, on the other hand, I must always strenuously object when someone talks about "building" user interfaces as if it's a matter of how easily one can plug widgets together. Which is what this article is about.

DaniFong 18y ago
Maybe it's a problem of language. Perhaps 'user-interface' is the wrong phrase for what Mathematica enables. It seems closer to 'interactive exploration'. Mathematica is really intended for general purpose exploration, and in that task, as well as many others, a 'hacked together' GUI made out of a few widgets is orders of magnitude more accessible than the raw code. It's not beautiful, necessarily, and it's not necessarily well-designed. It's not likely to replace the detailed, careful work of master designers. But it does succeed at placing extraordinary power at one's fingertips. When the elements simply work together, and the data can be simply, easily, and quickly plugged into to a display function and a manipulate function in a line or two, it opens really exciting new possibilities.
- ahoyhere 18y ago
  Sure, I agree with you. Makeshift interfaces surely have their place and I was duly impressed by the demos. They are fucking cool, and cliché, I'm not typically interested in higher math unless it's showing me insights related to me earning money. But. This is all well and good, unless you title linkbait "Why Spend More than Five Minutes on a GUI?". It wasn't "Build a Nifty Mathematical Experimentation GUI in 5 Minutes in Mathematica," or even "Build a Nifty GUI in 5 Minutes in Mathematica," or "Explore Math! 5 Minute GUI," any of which would have been accurate and still interesting. Instead, it appeals directly to the base (and incorrect) belief that so many developers have, that UI is an unimportant afterthought that can be dispensed with, if they only find the right combination of readymade widgets. In 5 minutes! Ugh.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    nods Okay. My bad for the title. I just used the title of the article itself. It didn't occur to me that it would provoke, but I see that amply now.
    - ahoyhere 18y ago
      Oh, I didn't mean YOU you. I meant the original author. :)