The GUI

The GUI

The GUI. The poor old forgotten GUI.

95% of the GUIs out there have aesthetics no better than that of the IRS 1040EZ tax forms.

[For those not in the U.S., those tax forms do look pretty nice, for forms - but they are still, fundamentally just your typical business forms that have been around for… centuries has it been?]

The other 5% are made up of games, apps with node-arc diagrams (telecom, project planners, mindmappers), and lots of image thumbnails laid out in grid patterns - all of which are at least trying to use something besides text to communicate with the user - but there ain’t a helluva lot of variety.

Tom Sawyer Software

Why? Is is just a chicken and egg thing involving the lack of tools and the presumed lack of any market in the business sector which so dominates the U.S. mindshare?

Don’t know.

But I do know that I am tired of all the Big Ugly ‘form-based GUI’s (FUIs) and

want my apps to be fun… and useful… and attractive…

Hmmmmm… Maybe it is just me, but it is really hard to think of any applications that are like that…

Imagine that there is a tool, or tool suite, that

allows the software industry to grow the equivalent of the Beatles, or Pink Floyd

Dark Side of the Moon
(BTW, this recently released hybrid SACD is the the best recorded CD currently in existance)

- to have just 4 talented people (plus studio engineers) able to create something of similar beauty and depth and endurance. These 4 are likely to be comprised of a graphics designer, a computer-human interface expert, an animation expert, and a story writer -

Computers As Theater
(I’ve been trying to think of ways to make stories out of my apps for 20 years after reading this book. I know she is right but I find it hard to twist my perspective around to think of the app this way. More on this later).

- relegating us software engineers to the background - with no more recognition that the builders of George’s guitars.

Oh well.

Considering that the “Holy Grail of the Software Engineer” is to get computers to program themselves,

we just aren’t too bright when it comes to planning for our long term job recognition or security.