That doesn't sound convincing. The Xerox PARC GUI is everywhere. The results of their work are about as mainstream as they could possibly be.
Likewise, Smalltalk and Mesa were both hugely influential in everything from C, C++, Java and beyond.
Given that, it seems more likely that graphical development hasn't taken off because it isn't good enough yet. All developers have prejudices, but they typically have to yield to superior methodologies.
<quote>
Now, the abortion that happened after PARC was the misunderstanding of the user interface that we did for children, which was the overlapping window interface which we made as naive as absolutely we possibly could to the point of not having any workflow ideas in it, and that was taken over uncritically out into the outside world.
</quote>
> Given that, it seems more likely that graphical development hasn't taken off because it isn't good enough yet. All developers have prejudices, but they typically have to yield to superior methodologies.
The only existing mainstream environment that can replicate some of the live coding experience of the said systems is Mathematica.
That is why for old guys like myself it is so interesting to see all the live coding discussions that happen on HN, from people that never used those systems or at least saw them being used.
> <quote> Now, the abortion that happened after PARC was the misunderstanding of the user interface that we did for children, which was the overlapping window interface which we made as naive as absolutely we possibly could to the point of not having any workflow ideas in it, and that was taken over uncritically out into the outside world. </quote>
And then tiling window managers were invented, and users rejoiced.
> Now, the abortion that happened after PARC was the misunderstanding of the user interface that we did for children, which was the overlapping window interface which we made as naive as absolutely we possibly could to the point of not having any workflow ideas in it, and that was taken over uncritically out into the outside world.
He also goes on to praise NLS, which failed precisely because of its steep learning curve and unsuitability for large swaths of the personal computing market.
Incidentally, that's why a GUI with overlapping windows succeeded : because it was familiar, intuitive and simple.
IMO, it's rather telling that none of the major DE's or WM's involve automatic tiling. This, despite the fact that there are a myriad of solutions available [1]. It's not about "better" or "worse", but suitability for a given market.
[1] If anyone's interested, I highly recommend i3. As powerful as xmonad with a fraction of the configuration hassle.
Mathematica may have pioneered the notebook[X], but there are imitations[1] which are arguably just as good (or better given the seeming ad-hoc nature of the Mathematica language).
[X] I don't presume to know -- it's just the first system I came into contact with which has this concept.
Likewise, Smalltalk and Mesa were both hugely influential in everything from C, C++, Java and beyond.
Given that, it seems more likely that graphical development hasn't taken off because it isn't good enough yet. All developers have prejudices, but they typically have to yield to superior methodologies.