Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

7-1. More Humane Programming Language Environments

7-1-1. System and Development Environment

Programming environments have had even less benefit from research into cognetics than user interfaces have had. There is no question that modern systems are becoming increasingly complex and that programming tools need to accommodate this increasing complexity. Simple things have been made unnecessarily difficult, and we have failed to provide sufficient and sufficiently well-designed software tools needed to ease the difficulties of working in today's computer environment.

I will start with a simple example. To write a program that adds two numbers on the long-dead Apple II, you turn it on (boot time is undetectable!) and press Control-B, which gets ...