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An analogy with natural languages may be useful: there are no languages without syntax, i.e. no completely visual (ideographic) ones, except for simplistic sign

by Jun8 16y ago

An analogy with natural languages may be useful: there are no languages without syntax, i.e. no completely visual (ideographic) ones, except for simplistic signage domains, e.g. signs in airports, traffic signs, etc. The reason for this is: if you push aside syntax, there is very little expressive power left in a language. The prog lang space mirrors this behavior well, I think: you have very specialized languages, like kudo, but developing a visual language with enough expressive power to be general is very hard, not to say impossible. I didn't understand your point about a "programming environment"

andrewtj 16y ago
The comparison you asked for is that of an apple and an orange. I think you may have also misunderstood my comment on syntax — I wrote "removing syntax as a source of errors" not "remove syntax".
- extension 16y ago
  But then aren't you just replacing syntax errors with "why can't I attach this visual thingy to that visual thingy"? Either way, they the essence of what they need to learn is the same: translate their ideas into a weird language. I'm not convinced that fitting shapes together is more helpful in that regard than a parser with good error messages and an IDE that does syntax coloring and code completion.
  - andrewtj 16y ago
    But then aren't you just replacing syntax errors with "why can't I attach this visual thingy to that visual thingy"? Yes — the idea being to replace syntax and/or logic errors with just logic errors. Either way, they the essence of what they need to learn is the same: translate their ideas into a weird language. I'm not convinced that fitting shapes together is more helpful in that regard than a parser with good error messages and an IDE that does syntax coloring and code completion. I seem to be the only one for whom the words "visual programming" don't conjure an image of weird shapes and diagrams — but I've already said that http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496529 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496529

by Jun8 16y ago

andrewtj 16y ago

The comparison you asked for is that of an apple and an orange. I think you may have also misunderstood my comment on syntax — I wrote "removing syntax as a source of errors" not "remove syntax".

extension 16y ago
But then aren't you just replacing syntax errors with "why can't I attach this visual thingy to that visual thingy"? Either way, they the essence of what they need to learn is the same: translate their ideas into a weird language. I'm not convinced that fitting shapes together is more helpful in that regard than a parser with good error messages and an IDE that does syntax coloring and code completion.
- andrewtj 16y ago
  But then aren't you just replacing syntax errors with "why can't I attach this visual thingy to that visual thingy"? Yes — the idea being to replace syntax and/or logic errors with just logic errors. Either way, they the essence of what they need to learn is the same: translate their ideas into a weird language. I'm not convinced that fitting shapes together is more helpful in that regard than a parser with good error messages and an IDE that does syntax coloring and code completion. I seem to be the only one for whom the words "visual programming" don't conjure an image of weird shapes and diagrams — but I've already said that http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496529 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496529