4 ms·
What if we expand what we mean by "programming" and who we call "programmers"? Decades ago Hypercard enabled regular users to create the kind of interactive med
by scroot 8y ago
What if we expand what we mean by "programming" and who we call "programmers"? Decades ago Hypercard enabled regular users to create the kind of interactive media you've described, and to do so easily. There are several reasons it worked so well, but chief among them was the overall metaphor employed: cards, stacks, and everything that goes in (or on) them. These were intuitive to human thinking, and people were able to take advantage of it.
So often computer/software/platform designers use inappropriate metaphors. If you want people to truly be able to "compute" dynamic media with your system, but you trap them in ideas of bits, bytes, words, or today's data structures, you have already lost.
(You wouldn't ask a carpenter to build you a table using quantum mechanics).
What's perhaps most depressing about all of this is that we had better systems (like Hypercard) two decades ago for allowing regular users to do this kind of stuff. Today it's more difficult.
- germinalphrase 8y agoAs an educator and non-programmer, I would love a "tool for making tools". I'm constantly introduced to new tools being made for me that don't actually solve my problems. Let me define what would make my work more efficient/effective.
- walterbell 8y agoWhich tools-for-tools have you tried? Any thoughts on LiveCode (https://livecode.com https://livecode.com, modern day Hypercard) or Jupyter notebooks?
- germinalphrase 8y agoI haven't tried either of those, but I'll give them a look. You believe a non-programmer could use them effectively?
- disqard 8y agoIf you happen to have time and are curious, I'd like to point you at BlockStudio [1], a text-free visual programming language that's aimed at beginners learning to code. Disclosure: It's my own research work, and definitely "work in progress". [1] www.blockstud.io
- germinalphrase 8y agoI'll have time in a few weeks when school lets out. Thank you for the suggestion.
- disqard 8y agoGentle reminder, in case you happen to have time now (or soon).
- walterbell 8y agoThe first one is the modern incarnation of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard, the 30-year old hypermedia precursor of web and wiki navigation, which was used by many non-programmers. The second one is the current open-source leader in academic instruction, since it enables live feedback between code changes and the instructional notebook. It has attracted a large community of academic users, but I don’t know if it’s suitable for long term projects.