5 ms·
The more generalized a tool is, the more special knowledge you need to use it for specific tasks. The advantage of stored-program computing is that we can take
by djur 12y ago
The more generalized a tool is, the more special knowledge you need to use it for specific tasks. The advantage of stored-program computing is that we can take a general tool (a computer) and package it with a set of automated instructions (the stored program) to turn it into a specialized tool that you can use with general knowledge. That's pretty much the fundamental endeavor of the software profession.
Compilers, IDEs, etc. are themselves generalized tools to produce more specialized tools; as a result of being generalized, they require special knowledge to use. A programming environment that allowed you to create an arbitrary specialized application using only general knowledge of computing would certainly be a great thing to have -- in fact, I'd describe it as the holy grail of computing.
People have been pursuing that goal for decades. Partial solutions have been discovered in the past (the OP mentions Hypercard, Visual Basic, etc.) but have generally been insufficiently powerful. It is also frequently difficult to keep them up to date with changes in the underlying technology.
- webmaven 12y agoI guess the question is, where are the equivalent partial solutions for the web?
- djur 12y agoI think there's not nearly as much agreement on how a "web app" might look or work today as there was for a desktop app even as early as the early '90s. For "classic" (content-based) web apps (forums, CMSes, blogs), there's already fairly sophisticated, end user-targeted tools that fill that role. For a lot of people, WordPress is the Visual Basic of the web. Some wiki engines could be said to resemble Hypercard. But the community is so split on what the "modern web app" should look like (thin client? thick client? standards-based or not? use the DOM or draw directly?) that I think it'd be much harder to gain much support for a "Hypercard for the Web" -- many web developers, possibly even a majority, would consider it to be "doing it wrong" and "teaching bad habits" _no matter what it looked like_.
- webmaven 12y agoI think I'd be fine with an opinionated partial solution, even if it wasn't too popular. But I don't really see anything like that.
- abrahamepton 12y agoWhat about Macaw? http://macaw.co/ http://macaw.co/
- webmaven 12y agoGeneral purpose design tools are again the equivalent of DTP (and very welcome), but not an app solution (unless I have completely misunderstood the audience Macaw is for).