Visual programming is stuck on the form

https://interjectedfuture.com/visual-programming-is-stuck-on-the-form/

by iamwil • 1 year ago

10 2 1 year ago

dagelf• 1 year ago

An essay on why visual programming is way too tainted by text... ironically, in 5000 words.

Good points made, but some missed: the visual cortex is easy to overload. Maybe its our whole desktop environment and window paradigm that needs an overhaul. Or maybe text isn't that bad.

But the point is made. I think the real problem is that the kind of people have have, up to now, been able to create software, have been stuck in a certain mindset. That seems to have changed, so, watch this space, I guess?

Maybe a hint for a new form is in the recursive nature of software: Code and data mimic CPU and RAM, instruction and parameter, and compute cluster and storage cluster... I made a very unconventional IDE that played with this, that made sense to me, in DOS. Maybe its time to revisit it...

namaria• 1 year ago

Programmable computers will accept any amount of complexity you throw at them. Therein lies the problem. The challenge is not packing more complexity, the challenge is getting rid of all but inessential complexity.

Every silver bullet is seeking a way to pack in more complexity. Yet old hands have been warning for several decades. The trick is to keep it to a minimum, and well confined.

That takes a lot of thinking, a lot of learning, a lot of communication. It takes effort to distill all the apparent complexity into what is essential and what is not. Seeking ways to avoid this and just packing all the complexity inside the computer is always going to be a one way route into systems that cannot be maintained, will degrade their performance over time, will accumulate vulnerabilities, etc.

Visual programming is stuck on the form

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