|
|
|
|
|
|
by fauigerzigerk
1971 days ago
|
|
|
I know that's what they meant, but I disagree that it lowered the barrier to creating actual applications or to getting into programming. Everyone who had MS Office installed back in the 1990s (which was basically everyone) could easily run some quick VB code to try things. But the difference was that you could also create proper applications with a UI, a database and (optionally!) some glue code. We just had no good way of distributing our apps. Creating anything collaborative that wasn't restricted to a local network was exceedingly difficult as well. The Web fixed all that, albeit at the cost of cratering developer productivity, a massive increase in complexity and higher barriers to entry for new devs. And if you're asking me why the number of developers exploded while the barriers to entry supposedly went up, my answer is that the new opportunities that came with unrestricted worldwide distribution of software trumped the narrower issue of writing that software in the first place. |
|
|
Can't be everyone, how do you know the numbers? How many Office users actually used VB? MS famously stifled competition in internet browsers. 1990s numbers still won't give a fair picture.
>The Web fixed all that, albeit at the cost of cratering developer productivity, a massive increase in complexity and higher barriers to entry for new devs.
Why blame the web for higher barrier to entry. JS is doing fine. See a few surveys for popular languages: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#most-popular-...
https://madnight.github.io/githut/