COBOL was the earliest effort I know of to allow non-programmers to create applications. Its English-like syntax allowed managers and business analysts to desc

COBOL was the earliest effort I know of to allow non-programmers to create applications. Its English-like syntax allowed managers and business analysts to describe what they wanted the computer to do without programmers' help. Or such was the belief/hope circa 1960. I think the desire to program without programming is somewhat misguided. It's great to avoid churning out boilerplate code, and it's great not to need to remember lots of arcane interfaces, but programming, even in the most WYSIWYG DWIM system, still requires the ability to mentally model how the machine interprets its instructions and to write (click, draw, gesture, vocalize) instructions that solve the right problem.