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> But if you're in a time-sensitive situation and your code will only be used for a brief period of time, your business needs are probably very different than a

by Edmond 13y ago

> But if you're in a time-sensitive situation and your code will only be used for a brief period of time, your business needs are probably very different than a code-and-maintain-forever situation (e.g. a SaaS offering). I think this captures the central problem in our current software development state of affairs. Because as developers we are stuck with primitive tools that make doing even trivial stuff time consuming, we have been conditioned to view every piece of code we write as a "will be maintained forever" proposition. You don't generally see people using excel and worrying about the maintainability of their spreadsheets, because even sophisticated spreadsheets are trivial to create and so the default mentality is use and throwaway. This is a problem we are trying to tackle at my startup, a web developer tool that you can use to quickly put out applications to support day-to-day operations without obsessing about whether you're going to need to build a spaceship out of your current requirement.

the_af 13y ago
I don't know that sophisticated spreadsheets are trivial to create. I've seen way too many weird, buggy and outright broken spreadsheets to believe that. I agree with you we should strive to make trivial things simple to write, and I also agree many programming tools fail at that, but I don't agree the software we write (in general) qualifies as trivial. Even some spreadsheets don't qualify. People writing them often make a horrible mess of it, unless they truly are simple spreadsheets.
- Edmond 13y ago
  haha, I am sure there are many buggy spreadsheets out there... I didn't mean to suggest that it doesn't require knowledge and effort to put together a sophisticated spreadsheet but relative to building even the simplest web application, spreadsheets are a breeze.
- arthurjj 13y ago
  As bad as the spread sheets can get it's helpful to have the business side make them. Even if you do have to implement a 'real' solution at least you now have a prototype to go off of
jarrett 13y ago
This is a problem, and I've long mused over possible solutions. Every time I think about it, I come to the conclusion that the solution isn't a new approach to software engineering, a new language that blows away every paradigm, some abstraction that promises to make app development simple, or any other silver bullet. Indeed, the only "solution" I see is a solution in just the loosest sense. Namely: We continue incrementally improving languages, frameworks, libraries, and coding practices--a process that has been going on since software began. That's a disappointing answer, but I think it's the only answer, and I'll explain why. The complexity of the tools we use is a result of their great flexibility and power. For example, a Ruby on Rails app is a huge agglomeration of technology, including HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS, SCSS, Ruby, the Rails framework, and usually a number of other, project-specific technologies. All of these technologies must be learned (no small task), and their quirky interactions with each other must be managed. One sometimes thinks, "There must be a better way! There must be some abstraction that can hide all this technology." But I challenge anyone to design such a thing. Each of those technologies is mature. Each one has had tremendous effort put into designing the simplest possible API without sacrificing power and flexibility. Even technologies with a lot of baggage, like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, have seen substantial improvements in recent years. Given that, does anyone think they can do better? Can anyone do everything these technologies do and present a radically simplified API? Remember, you can't sacrifice power and flexibility and just support the most common use cases. Almost any application will need at least one thing that's unique or idiosyncratic. This is why people use Rails (or similar tools) for custom apps instead of Wordpress. Wordpress has many off-the-shelf plugins that provide commonly-needed features. From a site maintainer's perspective, Wordpress abstracts away most of the complex web programming inherent in those features. But for serious app developers, that's almost never good enough. The plugins never seem to work exactly as you need them to, and they rarely talk to each other the way you would like. A short ways into the project, you're forced to either hack up your plugins, which is a maintenance disaster, or code your own plugins, which means you're really just using Wordpress as an inferior Rails substitute.
- Edmond 13y ago
  A good tool does not need to throwaway existing frameworks or paradigms in order to deliver. I am a firm believer in using what's already proven. >The complexity of the tools we use is a result of their great flexibility and power. This may see like a strength but it is actually a massive weakness. Existing IDEs attempt to be all things to all people and as a result are not actually delivering the best that they could if they were more focused. >Given that, does anyone think they can do better? Download our software (check my profile for link) and spend some time playing with it, you might just reconsider that position :) Or join the newsletter, we are coming out with an exciting update that is basically going to attempt to combine wordpress-like application composition within an IDE.

by Edmond 13y ago

the_af 13y ago

I don't know that sophisticated spreadsheets are trivial to create. I've seen way too many weird, buggy and outright broken spreadsheets to believe that. I agree with you we should strive to make trivial things simple to write, and I also agree many programming tools fail at that, but I don't agree the software we write (in general) qualifies as trivial. Even some spreadsheets don't qualify. People writing them often make a horrible mess of it, unless they truly are simple spreadsheets.

Edmond 13y ago
haha, I am sure there are many buggy spreadsheets out there... I didn't mean to suggest that it doesn't require knowledge and effort to put together a sophisticated spreadsheet but relative to building even the simplest web application, spreadsheets are a breeze.
arthurjj 13y ago
As bad as the spread sheets can get it's helpful to have the business side make them. Even if you do have to implement a 'real' solution at least you now have a prototype to go off of

jarrett 13y ago

This is a problem, and I've long mused over possible solutions. Every time I think about it, I come to the conclusion that the solution isn't a new approach to software engineering, a new language that blows away every paradigm, some abstraction that promises to make app development simple, or any other silver bullet. Indeed, the only "solution" I see is a solution in just the loosest sense. Namely: We continue incrementally improving languages, frameworks, libraries, and coding practices--a process that has been going on since software began. That's a disappointing answer, but I think it's the only answer, and I'll explain why. The complexity of the tools we use is a result of their great flexibility and power. For example, a Ruby on Rails app is a huge agglomeration of technology, including HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS, SCSS, Ruby, the Rails framework, and usually a number of other, project-specific technologies. All of these technologies must be learned (no small task), and their quirky interactions with each other must be managed. One sometimes thinks, "There must be a better way! There must be some abstraction that can hide all this technology." But I challenge anyone to design such a thing. Each of those technologies is mature. Each one has had tremendous effort put into designing the simplest possible API without sacrificing power and flexibility. Even technologies with a lot of baggage, like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, have seen substantial improvements in recent years. Given that, does anyone think they can do better? Can anyone do everything these technologies do and present a radically simplified API? Remember, you can't sacrifice power and flexibility and just support the most common use cases. Almost any application will need at least one thing that's unique or idiosyncratic. This is why people use Rails (or similar tools) for custom apps instead of Wordpress. Wordpress has many off-the-shelf plugins that provide commonly-needed features. From a site maintainer's perspective, Wordpress abstracts away most of the complex web programming inherent in those features. But for serious app developers, that's almost never good enough. The plugins never seem to work exactly as you need them to, and they rarely talk to each other the way you would like. A short ways into the project, you're forced to either hack up your plugins, which is a maintenance disaster, or code your own plugins, which means you're really just using Wordpress as an inferior Rails substitute.

Edmond 13y ago
A good tool does not need to throwaway existing frameworks or paradigms in order to deliver. I am a firm believer in using what's already proven. >The complexity of the tools we use is a result of their great flexibility and power. This may see like a strength but it is actually a massive weakness. Existing IDEs attempt to be all things to all people and as a result are not actually delivering the best that they could if they were more focused. >Given that, does anyone think they can do better? Download our software (check my profile for link) and spend some time playing with it, you might just reconsider that position :) Or join the newsletter, we are coming out with an exciting update that is basically going to attempt to combine wordpress-like application composition within an IDE.