Hallo everyone, > At the 1985 Empirical Studies of Programmers conference I made a public > bet [...] arguing that end-user-programming would *NOT* be nearly as > pervasive as most of the attendees seemed to believe [...] > even TEN YEARS from the time of the bet (i.e in 1995). > > Thomas Green agreed to be the judge, and the bet was agreed to be >$1000. > > In my opinion, I won easily. Thomas is lurking with interest on this discussion. A voice from Jeff would be extremely welcome. At present the balance of evidence seems to be in Marc's direction. What do others think? Brad's evidence about relative popularity of languages doesn't say anything about absolute frequency of end-user-programming. What about spreadsheets, though? Marc says >SPREADSHEET PROGRAMMING *IS* DEFINITELY ALLOWED but does that inlcude just using a spreadsheet to add up a column of figures, or does it mean writing macros? Does anyone have any figures for macro usage in spreadhseets, word processors, and other common apps? BTW Marc says >In my recollection, this was considered by most attendees to be somewhat >rash on my part That was my recollection too. And I must say I wanted the result to go the other way. Marc finishes up asking >c) what we should do with the money? (some kind of prize fund would be >fine; I don't personally want the dough, nor do I want to inflict a 1K fine >on Jeff, but where I come from this is nevertheless a serious business!). Comments from PPIGlets would be very welcome about Marc's suggestion of setting up a prize fund if he wins. Of course, we have developed a strong tradition now of not giving prizes for the orthodox 'best paper', because we want to keep relaxed discussion going: do people think it's time to change that tradition, and have a real prize for a real best paper? Or are there other good uses we can propose to Marc? Naturally, if Jeff establishes convincing evidence that he has won, it will be his money and his decision what to do with it. Thomas Green preferred postal address: 27 Allerton Park, Leeds LS7 4ND, UK +44-(0)113-226-6687; fax +44-(0)113-226-2751 http://www.Ndirect.co.uk/~thomas.green/ Computer Based Learning Unit University of Leeds, UK
