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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 sou
by 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 agoBut 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 agoBut 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