I'd like to thank Marek for this article, which makes many valid points and helps us stay grounded, remembering that not everyone knows as much as we do. Just a couple of points:
-- "programming languages which are designed to be easy to learn tend to be useless"
Hmmm, that doesn't always have to be the case. If they were designed just to be easy, with no further aim in mind, then it might be true. But there are a lot of easy-to-learn languages that are far from useless. SQL is the obvious leading light. The key point is that a language should be good at what it's designed for, and that's not always incompatible with ease of use.
-- "HyperCard"
Wow, what an inspiration that was. Glorious times that should never be forgotten. Did you know it actually lives on, having inspired both Revolution and Live Code?
-- "If you want to show people why programming is worthwhile and help them understand how they can use it, you need to show them how to solve a real-world problem."
And that's why a good choice of domain-specific, easy-to-learn languages/tools is valuable. We don't all have the time or patience to learn programming "properly" from the ground up when our target is to animate part of a web page or set up a chain of sound filters. The user of your solution doesn't care HOW you did it as long as you did it. Remember, "if you can't tell the difference, there IS no difference".
I'd like to thank Marek for this article, which makes many valid points and helps us stay grounded, remembering that not everyone knows as much as we do. Just a couple of points:
-- "programming languages which are designed to be easy to learn tend to be useless"
Hmmm, that doesn't always have to be the case. If they were designed just to be easy, with no further aim in mind, then it might be true. But there are a lot of easy-to-learn languages that are far from useless. SQL is the obvious leading light. The key point is that a language should be good at what it's designed for, and that's not always incompatible with ease of use.
-- "HyperCard"
Wow, what an inspiration that was. Glorious times that should never be forgotten. Did you know it actually lives on, having inspired both Revolution and Live Code?
-- "If you want to show people why programming is worthwhile and help them understand how they can use it, you need to show them how to solve a real-world problem."
And that's why a good choice of domain-specific, easy-to-learn languages/tools is valuable. We don't all have the time or patience to learn programming "properly" from the ground up when our target is to animate part of a web page or set up a chain of sound filters. The user of your solution doesn't care HOW you did it as long as you did it. Remember, "if you can't tell the difference, there IS no difference".
I highly recommend LiveCode, drag’n’drop coding for beginners.