"No programming"

Sat Jul 3 21:51:47 2004 "No programming"

Posted by Tony Lawrence
Search Keys: programming scripting mac tiger automator
Referencing: http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/automator.html

I've been looking over the descriptions of Apple's next Tiger OS. There's a lot of interesting features promised, but the one that brought a smile to my face was this "Automator", which will let you create little apps for repetitive tasks and "you don�t have to write any code".

Except of course you do.

Whether you are typing words or selecting "Actions" from pull-down menus, you are still writing code. I can't tell from the descriptions provided whether this is just sequential tasks or it has some "if-then" capability, but it doesn't matter: you are writing code. If you write dumb code (like deleting something before you copy it somewhere else), you'll get dumb results. If it does have any test and branch capability, no matter how limited, you will have to be thinking about the same kinds of things "real programmers" think about.

All silly tools like this offer is a protective cocoon that insulates you from typing words. It doesn't make your brain unnecessary, and it won't prevent stupidity any more than any compiler/interpreter does already. In fact, when things go wrong, this type of programming is even more confusing and less helpful than those awful "languages" that involve typing horrible words into a file!

I hope that this thing generates text files that people can look at. Perhaps some of them will reach the obvious conclusion that it would be a lot quicker and easier just to create the text to start with, and will move from that to some language like Perl or Python.

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