The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

March 2000

One More Time (With Feeling)

by Steve Sawyer

President, Detroit Area Fox User Group

In the last two issues of DaNews, I’ve been discussing (okay,

complaining) about how much difficulty we can experience just

getting Microsoft’s operating systems installed, and keeping

them working through installation of various applications and

components. I’m not alone in my concern. Even the folks at

Microsoft appreciate the magnitude of the problem.

I received an E-mail from my friend Steven Black (Hi, Steve!)

who wrote to say that he thought my August editorial was “spot

on” as they say in the UK. He recommended that I read an

article that appeared in the August issue of Harper’s. I took his

advice and snagged a copy. The article is indeed highly worth

reading and turns out to be an excerpt from the author’s book

“The Dumbing Down of Programming”, which will be winging it’s

way to my door as soon as I remember to log onto

Amazon.com to order it. I’d cite the author's name and give

more specifics about the ISBN number and such, but I’ve

temporarily misplaced the photocopy I made of the article.

(Just think, if I’d gotten it electronically I wouldn’t have lost it!

<grrrr.>) I’ll have all the particulars at our next meeting for those

interested.

Anyway, this author compares the open architecture of Linux to

that of her primary development platform, Windows NT/Worksta-

tion. I remember back when I bought my first “modern era”

PC, and was trying to decide between the IBM-PC platform and

the Macintosh. I decided on the PC platform because of its

open architecture. I preferred a system where, if necessary, I

could lift the hood and turn a wrench on the sucker. (Never mind

that Mac- heads claim that this is not necessary with a Mac).

When we were still in the DOS world, it was very annoying to

have to constantly tweak all the entries in the AUTOEXEC.BAT

and CONFIG.SYS files to get everything working right. On the

other hand, you could, eventually, usually, get the dam thing up

and running. Each new piece of software had it’s potential for

forcing you back into the bowels of your configuration. However,

the configuration was contained in two ASCII text files, you had

an editor, and you could always fiddle and change load orders

and driver switches until it worked. In today’s environment, you

all too often come up against a brick wall where you’ve ex-

hausted most or all of your options.

In application development, too, we often hit the limitations of

the current architecture. You have an ActiveX control that

doesn’t work. Can you fix it? Not if you didn’t write it! Even if

you’ve created an ActiveX control in VB, you can still get stuck

in DLL Hell in which you have few options but to do a “Freeman”

on your machine, formatting the hard drive and re-installing

everything, and even then things may not work.

What Microsoft is trying to do is make things easy for program-

mers. Point. Click. Add this control. Set these properties.

Bingo! Yes, this is indeed “dumbing down” programming. A

unix system on the other hand does allow you access to the

innards of the operating system, and even provides the opportu-

nity to fix or modify the OS when necessary. The developer has

complete control over the entire process from the hardware to

the user interface.

It’s important to recognize, however, that there has been a

tradeoff in this process. We’ve lost a lot of control, yes. But let’s

consider what we’ve gained.

First, how many application developers are experienced,

competent “C” programmers? Not enough. The whole point of

high-level languages like VFP, VB, Delphi etc., are that you

can accomplish in one line of code what might take hundreds of

lines in “C”. Even when working with Microsoft Foundation

Classes, programmers are initially much more productive with a

high-level language. RAD is as close to reality as it can get with

many high-level languages.

Second, when was the last time you had to crack a manual or

the on-line help file when working with an unfamiliar application?

In many cases, users will find that they can install the software,

and get something productive done within 20 minutes of playing

around with it. Compare this with the weeks of study required to

familiarize yourself with DOS-era apps like dBase, Lotus 1-2-3

or WordStar! I don’t think we can minimize the value of the

common user interface (regardless of your opinion asto how

good it is).

Back to programming, I know I don’t want to go back to DOS-

era Basic or Pascal where I had to write 200 lines of code to

create the equivalent of a VFP TextBox!

So we’re faced with a Really Big Question. Must we sacrifice

control for productivity in application development? Is this a Zero

Sum Game? I know I’m growing increasingly weary of being out

of control of my development environment, to say nothing of my

user’s and customer’s production environment.

So what do we have?

1)

An increasing desire on the part of developers to regain

control of the development environment.

2)

The oft-spoken lament by developers that “things are moving

too fast to keep up”.

3)

The increasing desperation by the business world to reduce

TCO.

4)

The Justice Department’s continued interest in Microsoft,

and continued speculation by many of the eventual forced

breakup of Microsoft.

5)

The increasing amount of trade-press column inches and IT

community mental shelf-space given to Linux.

6)

Current and projected economic costs (and, some would

have us believe, outright catastrophe) from the “millennium bug”.

7)

Ever-declining hardware costs, coupled with ever-increasing

broadband technologies

(Con’t, page 9)

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