How Do You Do Business Apps? (Morphic Design Philosophy)

Mark Guzdial guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
Fri Feb 25 20:41:11 UTC 2000


At 11:08 AM -0500 2/25/00, Paul Fernhout wrote:
>The fundamental issue is the Morphic is designed with the programmer in
>mind. And more, a programmer who may at any time want to change anything
>anywhere and is willing to live with the consequences.  Squeak Central
>is filled with such people, so this environment is like water to fish to
>them. They say they want to support kids using computers, but they
>always then say something more like "kids programming computers". So,
>once again, programming.
>
>The reality (as I see it) is that "security" and "versioning" is a
>better model for a GUI.

My CS Sophomores were complaining about this very point with Squeak. 
If you visit our Swiki, you read comments like "Morphic just blew up 
when I rotated X.  I thought that this was supposed to be some 
advanced, research-y UI model!?!"  In class, I explained that 
research is aimed, as you say, with the programmer in mind -- but 
what the programmer can then DO (e.g., animated interfaces, rich 
integrated multimedia) is what the future of interfaces will be.  I 
came up with a slogan that seemed to go over well, even if it's a 
little too pat:  "Morphic is not an interface for your grandmother. 
But it might be like what your grandchildren will use."

Mark

--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list