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It looks like you're making a point that these things are all inherently complex. Isn't it more probable that the tools we have today are just inadequate to de
by innguest 12y ago
It looks like you're making a point that these things are all inherently complex.
Isn't it more probable that the tools we have today are just inadequate to deal with those problems? And maybe they are still inadequate after all these years because our industry is very stubborn and doesn't learn from its mistakes?
I see nothing complex about drawing interactive elements on the screen. Smalltalk with its Morphic interface offers a much richer and flexible GUI toolkit and that was out when, in the 60s? How many GUI toolkits have learned from those lessons? And Morphic/Smalltalk was cross-platform before Java, in ways Java isn't to this day. It seems to me what hampers evolution is the technology we choose (Java, C) and not the problem itself (drawing interactive elements on the screen).
For anyone interested in this discussion I recommend Alan Kay's "The Computer Revolution hasn't happened yet": www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY
- mwcampbell 12y agoMy point is that the inherent complexity of a UI toolkit is greater than many programmers realize. It's quite easy to implement your own UI that directly draws its controls on the screen and handles mouse clicks. Now, how are you going to make that accessible to blind users? Users with mobility impairments who can't use a mouse? How about right-to-left languages and non-Latin input methods? And there's probably more that I'm not aware of.
- jamii 12y agoThats true, but there is still plenty of incidental complexity. Poor layout languages with no composition, stateful manipulation of the ui, no way to express components. Tools like React.js and Apple's Auto Layout show that much of this complexity is not actually needed.
- mwcampbell 12y agoAgreed. I like the ideas behind React.js in particular.