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Allcancode: from a coding game to a tool that simplifies software production

45 points by voxelperfect 9y ago

voxelperfect 9y ago
This is a blog post telling the story of Allcancode that started with a coding game featured in code.org and played by millions of kids around the world and then transformed to a tool provider that streamlines software development.
- Cococabanana 9y ago
  No, it's the story of a guy with passion behind an unmarketable idea. Now they are desperate to keep their 'AllCanCode' trademark alive! It's sad really.
  - askvictor 9y ago
    Why do you say unmarketable
- z3t4 9y ago
  it apears they have not entered the market nor created a prototype yet though. maybe the next pivot will be a platform where designers can find developers. youre very lucky as a dev to find a good designer and vice versa.
  - voxelperfect 9y ago
    We will start with a private beta in about a month. The tool is already in use in-house to deliver real projects.
mar77i 9y ago
I wonder whether there is a Go4-like approach to control Marco, you know, that kind of PatternPattern that makes your code hard to read.
- voxelperfect 9y ago
  There are many things that could be done with Marco as experiments. Companies cannot survive on experiments, though :-) so we had to move on.
otakucode 9y ago
Did you build your tool with your tool? That's really the only question that matters as far as I see it. If not, why not?
- mcphage 9y ago
  > That's really the only question that matters as far as I see it. Why do you feel this question matters at all, let alone be the only question that matters?
  - divs1210 9y ago
    The Java compiler is written in Java, Rust compiler in Rust, Windows OS is developed on Windows PCs. Eating your own dog food, this is called.
    - voxelperfect 9y ago
      Exactly! And we are actually doing that!
  - otakucode 9y ago
    If it is being proposed as a new way of doing general software development, yet it could not create the system itself, then it has clear and profound limitations. Most markedly in the case of visual programming paradigms, it means they haven't solved the problems that have tripped up visual programming all along - what happens when things get complex? The approach of encapsulating things to present bundles of code as a black box is a good one, but it needs to be paired with a powerful navigation interface that allows flying down into those black boxes pretty instantly, and figuring out how you can be viewing the internals of those alongside the 'outer' code at the same time to understand how things are interacting when things go wrong.
    - mcphage 9y ago
      > If it is being proposed as a new way of doing general software development Which it isn’t. It’s being proposed as a tool for rapid application development.
8bitsrule 9y ago
There once was a tool that simplifies software production built into nearly all 8-bit machines. It was called BASIC. Millions of kids learned how (and how not) to code using it. Many of them gained a career as a result. Unfortunately kids in the future had to do without it. Because there were a -thousand- 'better ideas'.
- voxelperfect 9y ago
  You are absolutely right! I used to be one of those kids that learned machine code and BASIC while still in primary school. But technology evolves and expectations grow. That is why we need better tools all the time.
  - 8bitsrule 9y ago
    Hypercard was a better tool. And then they took -that- away. The fundamentals of coding don't change. Built-in BASIC was -so- easy to use. Which 'better tools' can say that?

45 points by voxelperfect 9y ago

This is a blog post telling the story of Allcancode that started with a coding game featured in code.org and played by millions of kids around the world and then transformed to a tool provider that streamlines software development.

Cococabanana 9y ago
No, it's the story of a guy with passion behind an unmarketable idea. Now they are desperate to keep their 'AllCanCode' trademark alive! It's sad really.
- askvictor 9y ago
  Why do you say unmarketable
z3t4 9y ago
it apears they have not entered the market nor created a prototype yet though. maybe the next pivot will be a platform where designers can find developers. youre very lucky as a dev to find a good designer and vice versa.
- voxelperfect 9y ago
  We will start with a private beta in about a month. The tool is already in use in-house to deliver real projects.

mar77i 9y ago

I wonder whether there is a Go4-like approach to control Marco, you know, that kind of PatternPattern that makes your code hard to read.

voxelperfect 9y ago
There are many things that could be done with Marco as experiments. Companies cannot survive on experiments, though :-) so we had to move on.

otakucode 9y ago

Did you build your tool with your tool? That's really the only question that matters as far as I see it. If not, why not?

mcphage 9y ago
> That's really the only question that matters as far as I see it. Why do you feel this question matters at all, let alone be the only question that matters?
- divs1210 9y ago
  The Java compiler is written in Java, Rust compiler in Rust, Windows OS is developed on Windows PCs. Eating your own dog food, this is called.
  - voxelperfect 9y ago
    Exactly! And we are actually doing that!
- otakucode 9y ago
  If it is being proposed as a new way of doing general software development, yet it could not create the system itself, then it has clear and profound limitations. Most markedly in the case of visual programming paradigms, it means they haven't solved the problems that have tripped up visual programming all along - what happens when things get complex? The approach of encapsulating things to present bundles of code as a black box is a good one, but it needs to be paired with a powerful navigation interface that allows flying down into those black boxes pretty instantly, and figuring out how you can be viewing the internals of those alongside the 'outer' code at the same time to understand how things are interacting when things go wrong.
  - mcphage 9y ago
    > If it is being proposed as a new way of doing general software development Which it isn’t. It’s being proposed as a tool for rapid application development.

8bitsrule 9y ago

There once was a tool that simplifies software production built into nearly all 8-bit machines. It was called BASIC. Millions of kids learned how (and how not) to code using it. Many of them gained a career as a result. Unfortunately kids in the future had to do without it. Because there were a -thousand- 'better ideas'.

voxelperfect 9y ago
You are absolutely right! I used to be one of those kids that learned machine code and BASIC while still in primary school. But technology evolves and expectations grow. That is why we need better tools all the time.
- 8bitsrule 9y ago
  Hypercard was a better tool. And then they took -that- away. The fundamentals of coding don't change. Built-in BASIC was -so- easy to use. Which 'better tools' can say that?