Hacker News Reader

The problem with attracting "developers" with a limited skillset is you're asking for low quality applications.

I'm not against the idea, and if this kind of tool attracted people who care deeply about human factors, interaction and graphics design I'd in fact be totally in favor of it.

But this doesn't look like much more than Visual Basic or, as Gruber put it, Hypercard.

View on HN

But Visual Basic (and VBA) revolutionized the way people used computers and was one the main killer apps on Windows. Most people, given a choice between an ugly app that does exactly what they need and a beautiful app that doesn't do exactly what they need, will choose the ugly app. And what better way to make sure an app does exactly what you need than to write it yourself.

Sure Visual Basic programs written by non-programmers are often a monstrosity in every way and most of us no doubt have our share of horror stories. But the point is that most of those monstrous apps actually work and solve a real world problem, and had they sat around and waited for a programmer to come along and solve their problem correctly they'd probably never get their program.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com