Re: Is Programming Obsolete?

On Sun, 7 Apr 2024 15:22:13 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:

The best software combines a graphical user
interface with a powerful extension language.

No, the best software builds its graphical user interface *on top* of a
powerful “extension language”.

The reason for layering things this way is that trying to program your
extensions by operating through the GUI inevitably turns into an exercise
in frustration (example: Microsoft VBA). Far better to bypass the GUI to
access the programmable abstractions underneath. If you can build your own
GUI extensions on top of that, so much the better.

Example: Blender 3D, with its powerful Python API, probably the most
comprehensive of any content-creation app. Essentially, every part of the
contents of a Blender document can be accessed and manipulation as Python
objects. In the web-developer world, we have the “DOM” concept (“Document
Object Model”); exactly the same principle applies here.

Other open-source content-creation apps also use or offer Python as their
API language: Inkscape, GIMP, LibreOffice.

And then there is Emacs, not only written (largely) in Elisp, but also
extensible in Elisp.