“We have a commitment to lowering the bar for scripting by using a graphical front-end for scripting. The hard part of programming has traditionally been keeping the universe of possibilities in their head, but programming is actually pretty constrained. We want to have a graphic front-end to the script so that users don’t have to keep in their head all the vocabulary, all the verbs. (Audience interruption: Like Frox? A: Yeah, like Frox, which was a project I worked on a long time ago. I actually think of it more like Hypercard. It’s a shame that the state of the art is now 15 years old.) Users should be able to basically select things from menus to write scripts, instead of having to be a programmer.”
This is great. Downloaded Squeak and was taken-aback to see a shrinkwrapped copy of Hypercard at the Apple store last week… Correct me if I’m wrong, but here’s little or no “consumer”-friendly programming applications or langauages being offered, let alone pushed these days?
How can we work to drop the barriers to being a builder? Alan Kay referenced Seymour Papert in his talk and came up with this great line:
“point of view is worth 80 IQ points”
…in relation to idea that it’s far easier to learn how the world works by building models of it.
Mentioned the idea of B-Logo before, perhaps it’s time to think harder about it.
After all the BBC sponsored the development of a programming language once before…
Petafloptimism 
Applescript is sort of a programming language, but it does offer what many people need to do, get applications to do things for them. It isn’t hypercard (which I enjoyed) but it is good to see Apple recognising the potential of it and supporting it more thoroughly.
We do need tools that allow people to define the problem, create the interface to represent it and then largely have the code written from templates, most of the data types and algorithms are in knuth etc.
The visual environments do get us part way there, Project Builder for MacOS X (free on the developer disks) is great, various developers rave about it. However they still let you make a mess of the data modelling and or user interface. You can’t pack 3 years of a computer science degree into a help file or a wizard, but you can guide to some degree or set out to solve simpler problems.
I suppose I’m saying that people set out to solve a range of types of problems and maybe we should model those. I think that both hypercard and applescript were sucesses for these reasons.
it sounds sick, but i used to teach a course years back that guided people from design tools to programming. I used the now defunct Quark Immedia plug-in as an intro to programming in lingo. Immedia was a menu-driven language that would allow you to build active behaviours for visual objects. You could get quite comples behaviours goingg, but best of all, it taught users who had never programmed before some basic syntax, including if..then loops, etc. It sucked as an add-on for Quark (who on earth ever published an interactive quark document on the web?) but it was a fun and easy learning tool.
We’re having a similar discussion at Acts of Volition Opinions are welcome.
i guess every architect i have ever known wants to be a builder and every engineer i have ever known would prefer to have the kudos of being an architect. the builder just hunkers on down and puts their elbows into making the building stand up. If we make buildings that anyone can build they all end up looking like garden sheds or portacabins. And how much real inspiration do you get from putting up a building that anyone else can build? So back to the question; how can we all build applications? Actually is it the right question? What applications do you want people to build? apps to turn lights on and off; to shop online; to send a what’s on guide to your mobile phone; to create compelling content? in the world of the web its about communication, changing flows and making shapes. oops – that isn’t what you meant is it?
REBOL ( http://www.rebol.com ) is a fairly recent step in the direction of a simpler, friendlier scripting language. Reminds me of a more practical network-savvy Logo.
Problem is, while REBOL is simple from an implementors/architectural perspective, the language still presents a learning curve for new users. Mitch Kapor may be right in that the most user-friendly language is one that is primarily visual point-and-click.
You know, to do a visual interface run programming tool with a limited scope and purpose wouldn’t be too hard, but it’s going to be a whole different ball game with a general-purpose programming language, surely?
But damn, that’s a tasty nut to crack. Wish I had the time available to work something up on this, stating with some small steps.
I still remember a paper-based symbol n flowchart driven ‘programming language’ for gramming giant death-spitting robots in Warhammer 40K that was quite cool.
Oooh! You’ve hit a nerve.
Once upon a time there was a programming language called Prograph CPX and I loved it. You created programs by wiring icons together. You could do pretty much anything a C programmer could, except you could also simultaneously run, debug and create code….all at the same time. You could create code as it was running think about that…it was wild.
The applications it created were fast. I could add comments without cluttering my code, I could code collaboratively. It was object-oriented. You could zoom in on particular aspects of your code.
In my opionion it was easy to use. It could have been better in some ways but EVERY programmer I showed it to fell off their chair in shock saying “Why haven’t I heard of this before?”.
But it never caught on. The company that made it just ran out of money.
MCs smoke crack, I smoke aluminum!
I’m not normally one to drink from the Apple kool-aid (sysadminning OS9 networks tends to suck the fun out of computers), but I’m enjoying my new iBook immensely, and I’ve just realised it has a really powerful, easy programming language inside. For fr…