5 ms·

Anything that makes programming "easy for non-programmers or businesspeople" Why? Make Car repair "easy for non-mechanics" ... presumes people want to work on t

Anything that makes programming "easy for non-programmers or businesspeople" Why? Make Car repair "easy for non-mechanics" ... presumes people want to work on their own cars. They don't. I don't buy in to this answer. People obviously connect with the idea of creating content on their computer whether it's word processing, creating music, or editing photos. I think people like the idea of creating their own programs too. The problem with general programming is that the output is too ambiguous, so it's impossible to build simple tools to express them. Lego for instance has a drag and drop tool for programming mindstorm legos but the input and output are a known quantity. With PCs it is impossible to anticipate everything that can and will be built.

dotBen 16y ago
The sales-pitch of these "Programming tools for non-programmer's" is usually that all of the developers at your company are busy and you need to get something done so you can do it yourself. The problem is that the type of apps you can build are usually pretty narrow- and if your needs fall outside of that then you are screwed. To riff on the car mechanic comparison - dental work is expensive and not everyone has insurance that covers it - doesn't mean I should perform my own fillings with a home-kit.
_delirium 16y ago
I also don't really buy that answer, but I think it's partly because many businesspeople already do do their own programming, in Excel, a good-enough solution that also has the critical edge of being installed on most corporate machines. There are thousands of people who don't consider themselves programmers who do all kinds of what amounts to dataflow programming in Excel, ranging from quick scripts that automate repetitive tasks (what Unix folk might use a shell or Perl script for), to full-on modeling and simulation.
- hencq 16y ago
  It always strikes me that Excel is essentially a functional programming language. A limited one perhaps (no looping/recursion) with an awkward syntax (all those commas), but still one that tons of non-programmers manage to learn and create powerful stuff with. This language then has an IDE that is quite advanced in some things (conditional formatting, charts) while strangely archaic in others (why are all variables are laid out on a grid?) I wonder if there's an opportunity for a product that introduces a more powerful programming language and steps away from doing all the calculations on a grid, but that keeps the intuitiveness of Excel.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    Indeed there is just such a niche of products, such as Resolver One. I think for a lot of people the attraction to spreadsheets is the same as for GUIs: very little short-term memory is required -- you can delegate remembering options and state to the user interface itself.
    - hencq 16y ago
      Interesting, I didn't know about Resolver One. I'll try it out when I have some time. Thanks!
      - jacques_chester 16y ago
        No worries. I usually enjoy learning about odd technologies. In the programmability space there's also SIAG (Scheme in a Grid). For analysis you might also look at Quantrix and SuperTable for inspiration.
  - fhars 16y ago
    You are not the first one to think about that: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/excel/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...
  - 3pt14159 16y ago
    You are right that Excel is the most widely used programing language, but it does have recursion and looping. They might be hidden under various tools (Macros for the trivial case, but Goal Seek for optimization, Data Tables for exploration, and Solver for multilinear optimization). Excel also does have the ability to have a "variable" hold multiple values. Pressing control-shift-enter will allow you to start using arrays in the cells, and there are a ton of functions that can handle them. So the reason excel won as the common mans programming language is that it doesn't force you to learn everything all at once. It starts you off as just a table of sorts (useful on its own), then you can graph stuff (useful), then you learn about sum(a1:a30) (useful), and you just keep going down the rabbit hole until you've mastered everything. The only thing that I really hate about Excel is that Procs cannot be run in parallel, otherwise so many other cool things would be possible. last time I checked, at least.

dotBen 16y ago

The sales-pitch of these "Programming tools for non-programmer's" is usually that all of the developers at your company are busy and you need to get something done so you can do it yourself. The problem is that the type of apps you can build are usually pretty narrow- and if your needs fall outside of that then you are screwed. To riff on the car mechanic comparison - dental work is expensive and not everyone has insurance that covers it - doesn't mean I should perform my own fillings with a home-kit.

_delirium 16y ago

I also don't really buy that answer, but I think it's partly because many businesspeople already do do their own programming, in Excel, a good-enough solution that also has the critical edge of being installed on most corporate machines. There are thousands of people who don't consider themselves programmers who do all kinds of what amounts to dataflow programming in Excel, ranging from quick scripts that automate repetitive tasks (what Unix folk might use a shell or Perl script for), to full-on modeling and simulation.

hencq 16y ago
It always strikes me that Excel is essentially a functional programming language. A limited one perhaps (no looping/recursion) with an awkward syntax (all those commas), but still one that tons of non-programmers manage to learn and create powerful stuff with. This language then has an IDE that is quite advanced in some things (conditional formatting, charts) while strangely archaic in others (why are all variables are laid out on a grid?) I wonder if there's an opportunity for a product that introduces a more powerful programming language and steps away from doing all the calculations on a grid, but that keeps the intuitiveness of Excel.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Indeed there is just such a niche of products, such as Resolver One. I think for a lot of people the attraction to spreadsheets is the same as for GUIs: very little short-term memory is required -- you can delegate remembering options and state to the user interface itself.
  - hencq 16y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know about Resolver One. I'll try it out when I have some time. Thanks!
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      No worries. I usually enjoy learning about odd technologies. In the programmability space there's also SIAG (Scheme in a Grid). For analysis you might also look at Quantrix and SuperTable for inspiration.
- fhars 16y ago
  You are not the first one to think about that: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/excel/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...
- 3pt14159 16y ago
  You are right that Excel is the most widely used programing language, but it does have recursion and looping. They might be hidden under various tools (Macros for the trivial case, but Goal Seek for optimization, Data Tables for exploration, and Solver for multilinear optimization). Excel also does have the ability to have a "variable" hold multiple values. Pressing control-shift-enter will allow you to start using arrays in the cells, and there are a ton of functions that can handle them. So the reason excel won as the common mans programming language is that it doesn't force you to learn everything all at once. It starts you off as just a table of sorts (useful on its own), then you can graph stuff (useful), then you learn about sum(a1:a30) (useful), and you just keep going down the rabbit hole until you've mastered everything. The only thing that I really hate about Excel is that Procs cannot be run in parallel, otherwise so many other cool things would be possible. last time I checked, at least.