Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Some of the very first programs written for computers (assemblers and compilers) were so that programmers could automate their own jobs. Nearly every advance in system software since then - recursive functions, software libraries, virtual memory, high-level languages, garbage collection, lexical closures, object-oriented programming, constructors & destructors, smart pointers, version control, package managers - has involved automating progressively higher-level tasks so that programmers can focus on new stuff.

Dreamweaver and FrontPage have existed for over 20 years. The use-case listed here isn't all that useful - if you just want a quick prototype website built from a WYSIWYG graphical editor, there are already very good tools for that, starting with the above two and going through web services like SquareSpace, Wix, and Weebly. I found the discussion of his approach fascinating, though, because it could be applied to lots of other, unsolved problems. Imagine being able to publish a website by taking a photo of a poster using your smartphone.




as a web developer my perception is dreamweaver and frontpage are now no longer relevant. is this actually true or am I just biased because of my job?


Probably true, but it's because their market (small businesses who just want a basic HTML-only site) has been taken over by website builders like Wix, Weebly, Wordpress, and Squarespace. Agencies & professional web developers moved up-market to the customers who require dynamic app-like behavior, which Dreamweaver and Frontpage sucked at, while the bottom end of the market moved to the aforementioned hosted services that could also run the site for them, handle maintenance, and easily integrate add-ons like email/blogs/commenting/RSS/analytics/etc.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: