Dependence on Programming Experts

[jbv]

Greg,

you might find my reply a bit rude, but I have to say that
I've been involved in programming since 1978 and in
man-machine interfaces design & other ergonomics since
the early 80's, that I came across that kind of discussion
many times and that along the years I found it rather
pointless...
In the early days of HC, it was also described as a tool
allowing non-programmers to build sophisticated killer
apps...

I'm sorry to say that such a tool doesn't exist, and
probably NEVER will...
Any software tool (especially multimedia authoring tools)
that doesn't require programming skills will always offer
only a limited set of features. This set might become larger
and larger as computers become faster and OS more
sophisticated, but nevertheless it will never approach 10%
of what you can achieve by struggling with lines of code...

I usually like to compare it with buying furniture kits at
Ikea versus getting carpenter skills in order to carve your own
furniture from scratch... It takes somewhat longer, but the
result is much more rewarding...
It's actually a software vendors trick to make you think that
their software will replace programing skills... they've already
used that trick in the late 80's with desktop publishing when
they claimed that buying PageMaker or XPress would allow you
to produce professional magazines... And what happened ? The
publishing market was invaded by hundreds of crappy newsletters
and magazines (same situation in the late 90's with websites).
The only publications that were worth considering were those
designed by ppl with real design skills...

Last but not least, the set of features offered by a software
tool might give you the illusion to be more productive, but very
soon you'll realize that a lot of ppl use those same features,
and in the end, all apps made with that tool will look quite the same...

JB