Post AJW6xiO2ZUWUF0xKC0 by Canageek@cybre.space
(DIR) More posts by Canageek@cybre.space
(DIR) Post #AJUhbt4BUYRgysCfei by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:10:11Z
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It is absurd that there are not simpler ways for non-programmers to make computers do what they want.
(DIR) Post #AJUhbtV7sNzqKQoBeK by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:12:25Z
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I used to go off about hypercard a lot. It was a tool, scarcely more complicated than Powerpoint, that enabled anyone who chose to to make programs that do things.
(DIR) Post #AJUhbtoygZsNK062am by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:15:23Z
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Today, I know a lot of business people who do the kinds of things I would write software for using Excel or Access and macros. But it's mostly boring business stuff. My mom used to weave batch files and sidekick databases in to something resembling a computer program.
(DIR) Post #AJUhbudJfQ8rq7eF3Q by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:19:27Z
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In the 80s, my aunt (a child) and my grandmother (someone who, today, can't even effectively operate her Television) wrote a series of computer programs from which they ran my grandfather's business. They generated invoices and printed them, scheduled jobs, kept a list of customers, etc.They did it all with an Atari 8-bit computer, and the included BASIC.
(DIR) Post #AJUhbvS0cwgwNLMj4K by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:22:36Z
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Part of the problem is one of approachability. BASIC still works, you know? I wrote programs in FreeBASIC as a kid. Python is out there, and is fairly easy to get started with, and there are plenty of good guides and tutorials. But they are not *approachable* you know?
(DIR) Post #AJW1emlHa9MAXKyv1U by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:28:48Z
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And then there's the whole issue of GUIs. I have never written a graphical application using a UI framework.I've started some, but working with UI frameworks sucks. I can't imagine starting with one for my first application. I've done web UIs for years, and they aren't *easy* but they're way easier than working with modern UI frameworks. Which, I guess, is why Electron is so popular.
(DIR) Post #AJW1enCvvLTTv5v07c by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:31:16Z
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There can be a better way.
(DIR) Post #AJW1enWQkr4QtZ2ZVo by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:52:25Z
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Smartphones and tablets are here to stay. GUIs are a part of life. The solution isn't to push users back to the command line. The solution must be to bring composability to the graphical environment.
(DIR) Post #AJW1enpvaMfNs2A8u0 by natecull@mastodon.social
2022-05-16T03:32:24Z
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@ajroach42 "The solution isn't to push users back to the command line. The solution must be to bring composability to the graphical environment."Definitely agree on this.I've been waiting for a "composable graphical environment" ever since the 1980s and wondering what the holdup has been! Still am!(because I was a kid who read Byte magazine, which talked about 1) GUIs and 2) Lisp/Smalltalk, so it seemed obvious to kid me that GUIs would be programming languages... and then they weren't)
(DIR) Post #AJW1eoAqKbOeutwqVE by TerryHancock@mastodon.art
2022-05-16T05:34:47Z
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@natecull @ajroach42 I've always thought it would be pretty cool to have a GUI based on flow-programming (like the Blender node system). Where programs would be programmable nodes with defined inputs and outputs.It's very similar to the notion of Unix streams and pipes, but actually more flexible, since you can have more channels.There's a Qt library for doing this kind of design, called "Floppy", I don't know if it would apply as a GUI shell.https://github.com/JLuebben/Floppy
(DIR) Post #AJW1eoYEvc705StWyG by penguin42@mastodon.org.uk
2022-05-16T16:41:56Z
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@TerryHancock @natecull @ajroach42 There's an ancient commercial visualisation tool called AVS that had a flow based system; see: https://www.avs.com/avs-express/ you can just about see at the bottom of that page an example graph; I used it decades ago and it was quite neat, the pips on the nodes correspond to types of parameters.
(DIR) Post #AJW1epWrIEbL7TFwSO by TerryHancock@mastodon.art
2022-05-16T14:04:18Z
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@natecull @ajroach42Also, in addition to having more channels, you can have more *types* of channels. In the Blender node system, the data can be scalars, vectors, images, etc. The connection points are color-coded by datatype (though there are conversions -- an image input can accept a scalar output by just reading the same value for every pixel).
(DIR) Post #AJW3BkaYmXKHJ9FUlk by PawelK@qoto.org
2022-05-16T16:59:11Z
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@ajroach42 Qt up to some version was pretty easy to hop onto and rather intuitive.
(DIR) Post #AJW3GHbfxoBSryvr1M by ACTupper@scicomm.xyz
2022-05-16T01:34:26Z
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@ajroach42 What are your thoughts on Scratch? While I've never tinkered with it, it seems like it's built with accessibility in mind.
(DIR) Post #AJW3GI0UTY286wXfhQ by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-16T01:49:02Z
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@ACTupper it's a great introduction to programming. It is not a good tool for empowering non-programmers.
(DIR) Post #AJW3KZQXeLKXITlib2 by Mek101@mstdn.io
2022-05-16T16:57:35Z
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@zbrown @ajroach42 Dear lord the XAML editor is just supreme! I just wish GNOME had an equivalent tool. They akready have the XML language, so what's really missing is the editor
(DIR) Post #AJW3VlXcwvMQ3QQAzY by PawelK@qoto.org
2022-05-16T17:02:47Z
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@ajroach42 mmm there was some household finances app for zx spectrum is closest thing I remember. Banca something was the name.
(DIR) Post #AJW6xiO2ZUWUF0xKC0 by Canageek@cybre.space
2022-05-16T02:27:36Z
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@ajroach42 I hear back in Windows 3.1 you could define an entire text box with like one line or something like that. You just had to tell it what the buttons you wanted were and what they should do and the OS would do everything else for you
(DIR) Post #AJW8IquWAuv0iFn2My by Canageek@cybre.space
2022-05-16T17:56:29Z
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@lispi314 @ajroach42 Even a limited GUI would help I think. I think it would be a lot less intimidating to people if they could click a desktop icon, them paste the file names into a box that pops up, then have to deal with the command line
(DIR) Post #AJYI39trC2HOpcYX0C by anthk@pleroma.tilde.zone
2022-05-17T14:53:20.980525Z
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@ajroach42 TCL+TK it’s dumb easy.
(DIR) Post #AJYI3ALVXEOiDNUc6K by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-17T15:21:15Z
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@anthk I haven't thought about TCL+TK in ages. Is it even still a thing?
(DIR) Post #AJYI3AfMLQHFCwmT2m by anthk@pleroma.tilde.zone
2022-05-17T15:33:36.814810Z
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@ajroach42 It’s there. But in order to be minimally useful, you’ll need tcllib+tklib (huge goodie pack, big math library among others), tcl-tls, tcl-snack (audio playback) and TkIMG (used by tklib). It isn’t a big install by no means, just a few MB, and you can do a lot with that even underpowered Pentium II-III era machines.
(DIR) Post #AJYI3B0H5f0WFoZAe0 by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-05-17T15:40:05Z
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@anthk huh, I'll have to poke at it and see how working with it is today. I last used TCL+TK in, like, 2007?
(DIR) Post #AJYI3C4D8VkZYJPpQ0 by mansr@society.oftrolls.com
2022-05-17T18:55:03Z
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@ajroach42 @anthk The best thing about Tcl/Tk is the website address: https://tcl.tk/