Zugg Software :: View topic - Good case for zApp in a "Joel on Software" thread

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 6:24 pm

Zugg,

I was reading "Joel on Software" this morning and found an interesting thread about giving a tool to end users to create GUIs and small apps. I thought this was a perfect case for zAPP.

The thread is here: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.96969.13

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

I couldn't resist. I posted info on zApp there. Very Happy

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 6:51 pm

I saw that. Wink

It seems that the folks over there react a bit better when an user makes the post instead of the actual author. Seems silly, but such is human nature.

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:42 pm

theNerd: thanks for the plug over on Joel's site. Of course, I think that many users *will* write simple programs, scripts, batch files, etc. My belief (and the reason for zApp) is that the reason many users don't program is that they are not given the simple tools that they need. People on those kind of discussion sites tend to over-generalize a *lot*. Of course 90% of computer users are probably just interested in doing email, browsing the web, etc and will not program. But that doesn't mean you can just assume that users will not program. There are still a *lot* of high-end users that want to customize software, write scripts, macros, etc. Just because this percentage of high-end users is relatively small doesn't mean there isn't a market for such tools.

I've worked in many different office environments, and in any reasonably large group (30+) of people, there is usually at least one "excel expert" who writes most of the macros and scripts used by others. So sure, the majority of users are not programming, but that doesn't mean that *no* users want to program.

Access is another great example. On one side, it is a *very* complex tool...as complex as most "real" programming languages. In fact, I find Delphi easier to program than Access in many cases. On the other hand, there are *lots* of Access programmers out there, and Access was a very successful product.

Imagine how many more users might program if they were actually given an easier tool, such as zApp?

Finally, keep in mind that there are a lot more "web programmers" than "traditional" programmers these days. You can go to a community college and learn how to write ASP web pages, or PHP in a couple of weeks. Scripting languages like this have become really popular because of the web. zApp allows them to build local desktop applications using the same concepts and knowledge from web programming, rather than having to learn something like C or C++.