On 99-10-05 at 07:57, Prof Russel Winder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Well, personally I couldn't agree more. Java is nice as a language
> > but it's not a language that it's easy to make anything useful ...
> > yet (I hope)
>
> This all surprises me. Whilst the experience of Ruven is a real one,
> they evaluated Java with respect to their domain and found it wanting,
> this is just one data point. It is unsafe to extrapolate to "Java is
> not useful in the real world" since this is patently not true.
I should perhaps make myself a bit clearer: I've got colleges that have
written pretty large systems ... that works 8-)
The problem I have with Java is the requirements needed to run an
application (memory - one example I saw was an outliner that needed
65MB to run !!!, speed, etc), problems creating user interfaces (that
looks OK).
So my problem isn't with the core language (there are a few things I
don't like but that's another thing) but rather with the environment(s)
and libraries. I expect that this will be fixed in a few years and then
Java will become much more attractive.
> > Personally, I belive that we'll see more use of end user programming
> > environments and here research needs to be done to find out how to do these
> > languages.
>
> A lot of people have been saying this for a long time and it has yet to
> happen.
It is happening all the time: we have spreadsheets, multimedia authoring
software like Director, macro languages in several different kind of
applications, databases, etc.
Now there is an increasing interest in online courseware ... this will
require new or modified languages.
> Clearly as with home improvements we have professional system
> developers and amateur system developers and there is nothing wrong with
> that. Organizations for whom software systems are organizational assets
> will continue to use professional systems developers and eschew totally
> end-user programming. For example, traders are never going to be
> developers of the systems they use for trading. They have neither the
> skill nor the inclination to get involved in developing the systems they
> use.
I'm not talking about people writing their own word processor, database,
etc but on the possibility for END USERS to modify the behavior of their
programs to fit their task. For example FileMaker makes it possible for a
lot of people to develop a databases to keep track of different things,
a word processor like Nisus makes it possible for a user to automate
some special task like for example switching between different setups.
Currently, few people will actually do this but I think the number will
increase (although perhaps not with the speed some suggests 8-)
> at UML diagrams. UML is better than code (usually) for understanding
> designs and architectures but it is still not that good.
UML is a language for one group of people, teachers creating courseware
need other kinds of languages, students in social sciences perhap needs
other kind of simulation programs than students in computer science, etc.
So, basically programming to me doesn't necessarily mean programming in
the traditional computer science sense.
jem
--
Jan Erik Moström mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Free Elektron http://www.mostrom.pp.se/folk/jem/
