Hacker News Reader

Comment by berntb | Hacker News Reader

Let me limit this to web applications.

To me this discussion sounds like an argument for user controlled scripting languages in web applications.

This is needed since web applications which use lots of Javascript can't be automated by normal web scraping libraries with no Javascript/DOM emulators (they support cookies, etc so they can do sessions etc).

Something like the classic Applescript, for user control. (Or maybe the latest web frameworks already have that?)

Edit: Reformulated sentence for clarity.

Edit 2: I think the plugins for Firefox etc are too hard to write? Maybe you could add scripting languages to them?

View on HN

This is really tempting, but my guess is that the answer is going to be no. Users want something that just works, and they would probably rather dig through a pile of stuff to find that one thing that just works rather than script it themselves. Elegant solution > pile of features > elegant scripting > source. Or you can do it all, like Excel. Even Word has scripting.

I think ahoyhere has alluded to the reason why the pile of features tends to win, and that is because it is better at leveraging the economies of scale in the shrinkwrap software business. It is so cheap to distribute software that you are much better off building for the mass audience. Now the hot thing is webapps which do not scale nearly as well (but avoid most of the junk that comes with shrinkwrap scaling, like having to deal with a strange machine and a crappy OS that deluges the end user in spyware, or pushing updates to users you don't know much about), so there is more incentive to meet the needs of a niche audience. And Apple is having some success sort of splitting the difference (vertical integration from the hardware up, and attempting to exert more discipline on developers to increase quality, all at the expense of distributing software to mass audiences). Microsoft, of course, is still in a pretty dominant position from exploiting this scaling to the max when IBM so graciously made the hardware into a commodity mass market item.

So far, the most successful web app (Google) is the one which has made web app discovery scale like nothing else (every page with useful content on it is a web app - code, data, it's all the same). The brilliance of Google is that it captured a mass end user market with a minimal user interface. They did it with math (maximal leverage of plain text queries plus the structure of the web, and similarly with ads which have simple interfaces at both ends and are backed with sophisticated algorithms), and scaling by imposing unusual amounts of internal discipline on the best developers they can get (and they can get pretty good ones). All this just to get to a position where they might be able to compete with Microsoft as a platform, and unseat the power of shrinkwrap scaling. I think the only way they can do it is by attracting a lot more developers than Microsoft, and the only way they can do that is by taking a lot of Microsoft's developers away. They might be able to do it, but there are all sorts of challenges. My guess is that what will happen is that they will draw a lot of developers away from Microsoft, and in the process they will lose a lot of their external cultural influence as far as being able to promote clean interfaces. Web apps will be even more dominated by the everything in one place aggregators (exemplified by Amazon and eBay) than they are now.

The problem with nice UIs is that there just aren't enough good developers to make it scale.

There are a few problems with this.

1. No one will do it.

2. Even people who do know how to program have a special aversion to JavaScript, especially.

3. Almost no one is equipped (or willing to invest the time/effort) to analyze their work and come up with a process that is best for them.

A typical person is about as self-aware as a box of rocks. Even particularly smart, savvy, successful people. It takes a lot of work to get real insight out of them in terms of work processes. And impossible to get them to generate novel ideas for solving those problems.

More importantly, to design great software you have to understand not just business processes, but software itself, and the human animal (psychology, sociology).

That is an extraordinary amount of extra crap to expect somebody to do, when they just want to get their work done.

This is born out wherever you see "lay people" creating their own solutions. Ever worked in an organization that powers itself on Excel? It's not only not pretty in a technical sense, but they never, ever, ever do a good job, even within the constraints of what is possible with Excel. And they also never think to question if there could be a better way.

So, that's what people like me are FOR.

All this crap happens to be my passion.

You and 'toadpipe' are probably correct. I'll argue the point anyway, to see if it could be made to work:

Consider that the scripts would run on the web server. That means they would be published and used by other users... (After a bit of analysis, so they don't do anything destructive.)

And charge money from users that really want their scripts to be private.

Just make certain that there is a script language defined for the web app framework -- and an extensible object model for the local web site's data. (Again, Applescript. But not that syntax!)

Then the question should be:

Why?

I thought that was obvious from the starting point. Lacking features is a problem for large subsets of users.

This would be a way to add functionality (and possibly to integrate with other services, so you e.g. could do "legal" XSS.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com