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It would be cool if something evolved from Scratch to become a modern Visual Basic, something not just for learning and play; that went mainstream for the masse

It would be cool if something evolved from Scratch to become a modern Visual Basic, something not just for learning and play; that went mainstream for the masses. imo the biggest problem with most programming languages is user uncertainty of constraints. It has parallels with GUIs vs command lines. Command lines have no visual constraints with what you could type. i.e. the user doesn't know what they can and can't type. The GUI on the other hand shows everything that a user can do visually. It has constraints. There are only so many buttons and menu items. It helps limit fear and confusion. While IDEs do help bridge this gap, they only go so far for people who aren't as motivated as programmers. It would be nice to have a programming language with this feature (I know they already exist) to go mainstream.

btown 8y ago
It’s interesting because Apple, once upon a time, had the exact opposite hypothesis: their language AppleScript barely had a documented syntax, and it aimed to allow any natural language (e.g., and I likely misremember, “tell the first application whose visibility is visible to set its visibility to hidden”). In theory, this could let anyone script their system, even non-programmers. In practice, it was impossible for even a seasoned programmer to know if a program would compile. Their later Automator GUI was much more successful, bringing visible constraints and prompts, but far less flexible. There is so, so much space to experiment and research good interaction methods in this space.