As programming environments get more powerful programers get lazy

[william humphrey]

I wonder if it is really bad that the very powerful programming environments
let us do stuff we (or at least I) could never have imagined possible
before. I'm only saying this because in other forums sometimes people say
"oh scripting that's not programming".  My answer to them is usually "Why
aren't you writing machine code in hex -- that would be the most efficient".
 In any case it's still difficult to write a really good program even using
a great environment like RunRev so they shouldn't worry about the unwashed
masses coming to their table. I do remember that some of the amateur stacks
made by Hypercard were used as an example saying that is why Hypercard was
killed by Apple. And wasn't Pascual designed to try to force programmers to
be more logical and not end up with lazy convoluted code?

About the only complaint I have with RunRev is it allows you to put your
code everywhere (don't want to give that feature up either) but someone else
coming along to look at your stack can take a very long time to figure it
out if there is some code in a card, some in a stack, some in buttons etc.


Maybe RunRev mothership should publish some guidelines on how scripting
should be done to try and prevent that problem? I know that there are some
excellent guidelines on writing clear scripts on someone's website. The
recommended consistently naming variables depending on whether they were
global, an array, or temporary. I think that those guidelines along with
some others should really be consolidated into something that the mothership
could recommend for our use.