Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cogs 2877 days ago
Programming for beginners is just as accessible as it has ever been, there are good languages (some specifically for beginners: Logo, and game making languages and so on) and good courses.

Where do I think programming has stalled is in the business environment. There, as the article correctly points out, it's much harder to automate your job unless you work in an IT department.

Most business end-users do their work in Microsoft Office, and this is one area where I think the tools have stalled. Visual Basic and its object models are a painful hurdle for a smart non-programmer who is trying to get things done efficiently, or who wants to learn programming for its own sake.

There have been some attempts to wire up Excel with Python, but until Microsoft decides to bundle an easy tool with every user's MS Office, programming is going to remain an arcane art.

4 comments

>Where do I think programming has stalled is in the business environment. There, as the article correctly points out, it's much harder to automate your job unless you work in an IT department.

Depends on your business. Ecommerce can be automated without needing to code. Many use a central product repository (e.g. Amazon), and build their web frontend (CMSs, shop engines, landing page & app builders) around that, interfacing with it through easy installable plugins and other automation tools. They're already "coding", without code, but "business components".

To have successful funnels, they also need to know UX basics that they can reproduce with those tools, or pick tools with those basics already baked in. They're basically full stack developers who don't code.

The downside to that approach is that you're totally dependent on all those other businesses. But many who start out this way, employ devs as they grow, or start with programming themselves, and transition to their own infrastructure.

MS recently added support for JS in Excel: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/azure-mac...
I'd suggest that the perfect tool here is Zeppelin (notebooks), basically a centralised multi-user sandbox with built-in versioning and scheduling. Deployment of a json notebook to different environments can be handled easily while security can be done at the data layer (ie. SFtp, file access, database, API level).
"Just" use an automating tool: AutoIT if you're ready to do coding or Sikuli if you like their picture based system.