Re: [xml-dev] Does WTSIWYG make simplicity moot? (was Re: [xml-dev] dtds, schemas,xhtml, and multimedia technologies)

["Anthony B. Coates" <abcoates@TheOffice.net>]

** Reply to message from Mike Champion <mc@xegesis.org> on Tue, 12 Nov 2002
00:09:57 -0500

=
> >For the 80/20 things that most users need, W3C XML Schema is no harder to teach
> >than DTDs, if you are using a decent WYSIWYG Schema editor like XML Authority or
> >XML Spy.  Let's get away from the olde world charm of fireside discussions over
> >port debating which schema language is easiest to write and maintain using vi or
> >Notepad.  The world has moved on.
> 
> I've been muttering to myself about this all day, but couldn't come up with a
> pithy response.

I'll opt to leave my pith helmet on the hat rack.  I wouldn't want to be seen
to be taking it.

> "In teaching someone about COM programming, it would be nice if I could 
> just teach them how to use the Visual Studio wizards and all the code 
> generation features, but if anything goes wrong, they will not have 
> the vaguest idea what happened or how to debug it and recover from it. 
> I'm going to have to teach them all about IUnknown and CLSIDs and 
> ProgIDS and ... oh, the humanity!"

In focussing on what happens when trickly problems arise, you risk ignoring
what happens when they don't arise.  It would be *far* more time-consuming and
expensive to teach people how to do COM programming if the IDEs weren't
available.  I have certainly complained about aspects of MS's development tools
over the years, but the reason they are *so* popular is because the do actually
deliver a lot to developers who don't have the time, nor the need, to be able to
write COM programs starting with just two sticks and some kindling.  Sure, you
can't get away from knowing what is under the hood when you have to fix a tricky
problem, but not everyone needs to be doing the tricky problems, and not
everyone needs to be doing every tricky problem.  A world without IDEs would be
vastly less productive, in spite of the bugs that IDEs do indeed have.

	Cheers,
		Tony.
====
Anthony B. Coates, Information & Software Architect
mailto:abcoates@TheOffice.net
MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language)
http://www.mddl.org/