Java Magazine, July/August 2018
Giving Expert Users What They Need The case for including embedded scripting engines in your apps Much of the attention today on the user experience focuses on the preferences of consumers and nonexpert users When vendors deal with expert users usability of applications takes a different form can experts make the software do what they need it to do For many applications and packages the answer is wrapped in all kinds of limitations driven by the vendors perception of expert needs But there is one undervalued option that can in many cases guarantee the experts ability to get work done an embedded scripting engine Applications with a user accessible scripting option are expertfriendly those lacking them are not Scripting is the province of skilled users because it requires some grounding in programming and time invested in learning the details of a tools internal structure The benefit of application programmability has long been recognized ORACLE COM JAVAMAGAZINE JULY AUGUST 2018 05 from the editor PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB ADLER THE VERBATIM AGENCY The most common instance is surely Visual Basic for Applications VBA which enables the writing of sophisticated macros in Microsoft Excel and other Microsoft desktop apps Other software too has relied on scripting languages of greater sophistication For example Tcl is the primary scripting tool for electronic design automation EDA and CAD tools In other spheres such as UI design the embeddable scripting language Lua is widely popular In fact for many years the concept of embedded scripting was suficiently common that the original Gang of Four book on design patterns included the Interpreter pattern which today seems like a positively odd inclusion The popularity of this solution crested roughly 10 years ago in the form of domain specific languages DSLs which had a prolonged moment in the sun until developers realized that the benefit Level Up at Oracle Code Step up to modern cloud development At the Oracle Code roadshow expert developers lead labs and sessions on PaaS Java mobile and more Get on the list for event updates go oracle com oraclecoderoadshow developer oracle com developersrule
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