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Historically, some tasks have proven easier to automate than others. Much of typesetting and printing was rote, thus it was automated fairly early in the histor

by jarrett 13y ago

Historically, some tasks have proven easier to automate than others. Much of typesetting and printing was rote, thus it was automated fairly early in the history of computers. There have been efforts to automate programming, but so far it has proven impossible. That's because programming is almost never rote. It's likely that automating programming is tantamount to inventing a true artificial intelligence. If that happens, the implications extend far, far beyond web design tools.

callmevlad 13y ago
You're right, but I'm not arguing that programming can be automated as a whole. I'm saying that most rote tasks in web development (writing HTML/CSS, linking together various libraries, pushing code through processors, wiring up a basic UI to a database, etc) can be.
- jarrett 13y ago
  > writing HTML/CSS That's never a rote process for me. Every bit of HTML or CSS I write requires human judgment. Any part that doesn't is handled for me by preprocessors. I'm guessing that instead of "writing HTML/CSS," you'd have designers meticulously dragging objects and setting properties in a GUI. Isn't that just the same thing with another skin? If I have to click to set a property instead of typing the property in a text file, have I saved myself any work? Have I eliminated the need for some bit of technical knowledge? > linking together various libraries Concretely, what sorts of tasks does that entail? Generally there's a few moments to drop the files into the right folder, and a few more to add the appropriate tag(s) to the <head> or the bottom of the bottom of the <body>. How do you eliminate those steps? Or does the user still have to perform them, except in a GUI environment instead of a text editor? If the latter, then I'd argue the same as I did above about HTML and CSS. Or do you include certain standard libraries by default? If so, that's fine, but the same is achieved in more traditional, text-based frameworks. > pushing code through processors Which processors do you have in mind? SCSS and Uglify are quite trivial to run. I wouldn't call that a pain point at all. > wiring up a basic UI to a database I'm still not convinced that can be automated beyond the basic interfaces that something like MS Access provides. Which don't cover most use cases. Can you give an example?

by jarrett 13y ago

callmevlad 13y ago

You're right, but I'm not arguing that programming can be automated as a whole. I'm saying that most rote tasks in web development (writing HTML/CSS, linking together various libraries, pushing code through processors, wiring up a basic UI to a database, etc) can be.

jarrett 13y ago
> writing HTML/CSS That's never a rote process for me. Every bit of HTML or CSS I write requires human judgment. Any part that doesn't is handled for me by preprocessors. I'm guessing that instead of "writing HTML/CSS," you'd have designers meticulously dragging objects and setting properties in a GUI. Isn't that just the same thing with another skin? If I have to click to set a property instead of typing the property in a text file, have I saved myself any work? Have I eliminated the need for some bit of technical knowledge? > linking together various libraries Concretely, what sorts of tasks does that entail? Generally there's a few moments to drop the files into the right folder, and a few more to add the appropriate tag(s) to the <head> or the bottom of the bottom of the <body>. How do you eliminate those steps? Or does the user still have to perform them, except in a GUI environment instead of a text editor? If the latter, then I'd argue the same as I did above about HTML and CSS. Or do you include certain standard libraries by default? If so, that's fine, but the same is achieved in more traditional, text-based frameworks. > pushing code through processors Which processors do you have in mind? SCSS and Uglify are quite trivial to run. I wouldn't call that a pain point at all. > wiring up a basic UI to a database I'm still not convinced that can be automated beyond the basic interfaces that something like MS Access provides. Which don't cover most use cases. Can you give an example?