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Why do you think that doesn't scale? Hiding information is the basis for progressive disclosure, which is essential to handling the limitations of short-term hu

Why do you think that doesn't scale? Hiding information is the basis for progressive disclosure, which is essential to handling the limitations of short-term human memory. Wikipedia is card-based,* and it is one of the five largest sites in the web. See Cognitive Dimensions[1] for ways to make visual systems scale. As soon as you add encapsulation and abstraction, the system can scale; it's no different than hiding code logic behind function declarations and object schemas. If you add easy composition, like modern functional languages have, such systems could be more scalable than traditional imperative languages; code outliners like Leo follow the same structural principle, and they're great for programming. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dimensions_of_notations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dimensions_of_notati... * Ok, Wikipedia contains articles and not code, but my point is that the structure can handle lots of hierarchical content in multiple categories.

hacker_9 11y ago
Wikipedia is also written in English, and made for human consumption. English is infinitely more scalable than any programming language, and the brain is far more capable of understanding than a computer. So comparing the two is unfair to say the least. Additionally simply adding 'encapsulation and abstraction' does not equal scale. Live programming for instance requires context and re-running of code on every edit (and we could be talking millions of lines of code that need to execute), re-reading of data files, re-running of prior user input and so on. There's a reason it is only implemented for small systems (read, useless practically).
- TuringTest 11y ago
  > English is infinitely more scalable than any programming language, and the brain is far more capable of understanding than a computer. So comparing the two is unfair to say the least. IMHO programming a large system shouldn't be all that different from writing an encyclopedia, or rather a math textbook; the same combination of informal explanation and formal demonstrations could be the shape that "visual" programs could take. Literate programming is written in English, and it provides much of the same advantages of the encyclopedia or technical book. Systems like IPython / Jupyter work in that direction, and they belong in the family of visual programming (although they use "classic" languages for the formal part, nothing stops them from also including graphical models as part of the code specification). Programming languages should be made for human consumption, and one of the promises of visual languages is that they use secondary notation to convey the meaning of the program, so that parts that are not visible to the compiler are still relevant. I believe that programming environments should converge towards a hybrid of programming, using the best representation for each concept - like text (to represent abstract concepts), diagrams (to represent more physical properties - time, data flows, and dependencies between modules), and raw text for the human-readable comments that explain how everything is tied together. If you build a programming environment like that, my comparison is not unfair at all. >Live programming for instance requires context and re-running of code on every edit (and we could be talking millions of lines of code that need to execute), re-reading of data files, re-running of prior user input and so on. There's a reason it is only implemented for small systems (read, useless practically). Modern IDEs are capable of doing a lot of that when in debug mode, I see no reason why having a language with a graphical syntax should make any difference - it just places a little more weight on the parser and graphic card.
  - the_af 11y ago
    > Programming languages should be made for human consumption The problem here is the "impedance mistmach" between humans and computers. Wikipedia is not a good example: it is exclusively for humans. If there is a "program" for the computer, it's minimal: "search this", "when I click here, take me to this page" (you'll notice everything more complex than that, even in Wikipedia, requires its own mini-language). This is the kind of trivial systems which are easily encoded by "visual" programming. The problem is that real computer systems need to be understood by the computer as well as by humans. In order for something to be understood by a computer, it must be specified in formal terms; English -- natural language, actually -- is terrible for this. Once you're working in a complex system with a formal language, the limitations of these "visual" tools become evident.
    - TuringTest 11y ago
      > Wikipedia is not a good example: it is exclusively for humans. Not exclusively. Bots and Wikidata have shown themselves pretty capable of doing complex automated tasks on top of the structured data contained in the encyclopedia. And the wiki platform plus templates is a very general and flexible data structure that makes it easy for humans and software to collaborate. > In order for something to be understood by a computer, it must be specified in formal terms This doesn't need to be that way, at least not for 100% of the system. End-user development tools like spreadsheets and Programming By Example can be used to ease the impedance mismatch without requiring the human to specify by hand every single step in a formal language, so that partially ambiguous inputs can be used to specify valid programs. Only the task of building system software should require the full technical approach; most business applications can benefit from looser approaches - in fact being less strict can be a benefit in the requirements specification phase, just like User-centered design has shown us. Combine that with logic solvers and deep learning, and in the future we could get some systems that can use very high-level commands to build fairly complex automated behaviors.
      - the_af 11y ago
        You have a point about wiki bots, I hadn't thought of that. But isn't the "Wiki platform plus templates" an example of a textual programming language with a precise syntax and rules? As for the rest, I think it's a pipe dream except for the most basic, "build this out of predetermined blocks" apps.
EdiX 11y ago
> Why do you think that doesn't scale? Because it doesn't. Watch Bret Victor's last talk about Eve. All those ideas fail when you give them to novices and try to do anything more complex than describing a few static relationships. Maybe there's a way, but I'm skepitcal.
- TuringTest 11y ago
  Yet end users are able to build fairly complex data structures and conditional processing using spreadsheets, so we know for sure that it can be done. Of course experimental tools will be severely limited compared with industrial IDE systems that have been polished literally for decades; it will take years before we get these new tools into shape and learn what their best use cases are. But I'm not skeptical, because I've seen it happen before, and the conditions for it are now better than ever.
  - EdiX 11y ago
    Spreadsheets IMHO are a solution space that hasn't been sufficiently explored. However they are not particularly visual (especially if you try to do complex things with them), they are very much domain specific they are extremely computationally inefficient, they're very hard to version and they become intractably complex much quicker than equivalent imperative or functional programs. I've thought about what could be done to improve on their weaknesses (like strong typing, bridging the gap to databases, better table naming), even wrote some code in this direction, but anything I can think of involves either making them less visual, less user friendly or both and doesn't even begin to address the lack of generality Finally I have to point out that some spreadsheets have been around for longer than many programming languages in current use so they don't actually lack maturity, yet they have seen little improvement in over a decade.

hacker_9 11y ago

Wikipedia is also written in English, and made for human consumption. English is infinitely more scalable than any programming language, and the brain is far more capable of understanding than a computer. So comparing the two is unfair to say the least. Additionally simply adding 'encapsulation and abstraction' does not equal scale. Live programming for instance requires context and re-running of code on every edit (and we could be talking millions of lines of code that need to execute), re-reading of data files, re-running of prior user input and so on. There's a reason it is only implemented for small systems (read, useless practically).

TuringTest 11y ago
> English is infinitely more scalable than any programming language, and the brain is far more capable of understanding than a computer. So comparing the two is unfair to say the least. IMHO programming a large system shouldn't be all that different from writing an encyclopedia, or rather a math textbook; the same combination of informal explanation and formal demonstrations could be the shape that "visual" programs could take. Literate programming is written in English, and it provides much of the same advantages of the encyclopedia or technical book. Systems like IPython / Jupyter work in that direction, and they belong in the family of visual programming (although they use "classic" languages for the formal part, nothing stops them from also including graphical models as part of the code specification). Programming languages should be made for human consumption, and one of the promises of visual languages is that they use secondary notation to convey the meaning of the program, so that parts that are not visible to the compiler are still relevant. I believe that programming environments should converge towards a hybrid of programming, using the best representation for each concept - like text (to represent abstract concepts), diagrams (to represent more physical properties - time, data flows, and dependencies between modules), and raw text for the human-readable comments that explain how everything is tied together. If you build a programming environment like that, my comparison is not unfair at all. >Live programming for instance requires context and re-running of code on every edit (and we could be talking millions of lines of code that need to execute), re-reading of data files, re-running of prior user input and so on. There's a reason it is only implemented for small systems (read, useless practically). Modern IDEs are capable of doing a lot of that when in debug mode, I see no reason why having a language with a graphical syntax should make any difference - it just places a little more weight on the parser and graphic card.
- the_af 11y ago
  > Programming languages should be made for human consumption The problem here is the "impedance mistmach" between humans and computers. Wikipedia is not a good example: it is exclusively for humans. If there is a "program" for the computer, it's minimal: "search this", "when I click here, take me to this page" (you'll notice everything more complex than that, even in Wikipedia, requires its own mini-language). This is the kind of trivial systems which are easily encoded by "visual" programming. The problem is that real computer systems need to be understood by the computer as well as by humans. In order for something to be understood by a computer, it must be specified in formal terms; English -- natural language, actually -- is terrible for this. Once you're working in a complex system with a formal language, the limitations of these "visual" tools become evident.
  - TuringTest 11y ago
    > Wikipedia is not a good example: it is exclusively for humans. Not exclusively. Bots and Wikidata have shown themselves pretty capable of doing complex automated tasks on top of the structured data contained in the encyclopedia. And the wiki platform plus templates is a very general and flexible data structure that makes it easy for humans and software to collaborate. > In order for something to be understood by a computer, it must be specified in formal terms This doesn't need to be that way, at least not for 100% of the system. End-user development tools like spreadsheets and Programming By Example can be used to ease the impedance mismatch without requiring the human to specify by hand every single step in a formal language, so that partially ambiguous inputs can be used to specify valid programs. Only the task of building system software should require the full technical approach; most business applications can benefit from looser approaches - in fact being less strict can be a benefit in the requirements specification phase, just like User-centered design has shown us. Combine that with logic solvers and deep learning, and in the future we could get some systems that can use very high-level commands to build fairly complex automated behaviors.
    - the_af 11y ago
      You have a point about wiki bots, I hadn't thought of that. But isn't the "Wiki platform plus templates" an example of a textual programming language with a precise syntax and rules? As for the rest, I think it's a pipe dream except for the most basic, "build this out of predetermined blocks" apps.

EdiX 11y ago

> Why do you think that doesn't scale? Because it doesn't. Watch Bret Victor's last talk about Eve. All those ideas fail when you give them to novices and try to do anything more complex than describing a few static relationships. Maybe there's a way, but I'm skepitcal.

TuringTest 11y ago
Yet end users are able to build fairly complex data structures and conditional processing using spreadsheets, so we know for sure that it can be done. Of course experimental tools will be severely limited compared with industrial IDE systems that have been polished literally for decades; it will take years before we get these new tools into shape and learn what their best use cases are. But I'm not skeptical, because I've seen it happen before, and the conditions for it are now better than ever.
- EdiX 11y ago
  Spreadsheets IMHO are a solution space that hasn't been sufficiently explored. However they are not particularly visual (especially if you try to do complex things with them), they are very much domain specific they are extremely computationally inefficient, they're very hard to version and they become intractably complex much quicker than equivalent imperative or functional programs. I've thought about what could be done to improve on their weaknesses (like strong typing, bridging the gap to databases, better table naming), even wrote some code in this direction, but anything I can think of involves either making them less visual, less user friendly or both and doesn't even begin to address the lack of generality Finally I have to point out that some spreadsheets have been around for longer than many programming languages in current use so they don't actually lack maturity, yet they have seen little improvement in over a decade.