I was working in C++ on OS/2 at the time when a resource editor was hard to find and that chasm from the command line to the GUI was what made the jump to commercial software development feel like the Khumbu Icefall.
I worked in a small software development sub at a big bank and they needed a rolodex. I agreed to do it in my spare time if they'd buy me a legal copy of VB 1.0. I did the prototype in what feels like a glacial week today, but they followed through with lunch and a shrink wrap copy.
If there's a death of GUI or IDE development tools it's the same for all of them with the possible exception of the outer edge of Jet Brains and VSCode. Put simply, they don't scale like command line tools since you're dragging a 200 ton freight train of GUI bloat behind you where it doesn't deliver the impact gravity
that the train does.
HCI or GUI should scale like APIs do, but they don't, particularly now that resource editors are everywhere, and we're about to replace highly paid drag and drop mouse typists with nearly autonomous agents.
Humans benefit from visual affordances like VB because VB lowers the bar, or the barrier to entry. GUI development would still be stuck in the late 80's if Cooper hadn't made it possible for the inmates to overtake the asylum with their drag and drop tools.
I worked in a small software development sub at a big bank and they needed a rolodex. I agreed to do it in my spare time if they'd buy me a legal copy of VB 1.0. I did the prototype in what feels like a glacial week today, but they followed through with lunch and a shrink wrap copy.
If there's a death of GUI or IDE development tools it's the same for all of them with the possible exception of the outer edge of Jet Brains and VSCode. Put simply, they don't scale like command line tools since you're dragging a 200 ton freight train of GUI bloat behind you where it doesn't deliver the impact gravity that the train does.
HCI or GUI should scale like APIs do, but they don't, particularly now that resource editors are everywhere, and we're about to replace highly paid drag and drop mouse typists with nearly autonomous agents.
Humans benefit from visual affordances like VB because VB lowers the bar, or the barrier to entry. GUI development would still be stuck in the late 80's if Cooper hadn't made it possible for the inmates to overtake the asylum with their drag and drop tools.