I'm skeptical of visual programming, especially the most obvious 'blocks instead of text syntax' type. Spreadsheets use a formal, text-based language -- and end users learn spreadsheets fine!
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related is Bret's 'show the data'; block-based 'visual' programming is about showing (the same old) code as blocks, not about 1. showing the data or 2. having a better code for users' interestspic.twitter.com/4eEu4X6Su6
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also, from the mundane engineering perspective, it's an incredible pain to build a visual environment, compared to just writing a compiler or interpreter routine. huge state space and input space + lots of UI code -> harder to iterate and prototype tool ideas
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Most experts use hybrid textual-visual notations, so those tailored formal languages must be hybrids, too. Pure text is often good, but good is not good enough!
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I think the representation of text is important. Most text heavy stuff in a computer takes advantage of story-Esque linearity and planning. Text in excel is more abstract and non-linear, and our movements map better to table edits and transforms.
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