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I met with Bret Victor for lunch while visiting SF a few years ago and I specifically argued against visual programming languages making anyone able to program.

I met with Bret Victor for lunch while visiting SF a few years ago and I specifically argued against visual programming languages making anyone able to program. I mean I know that some people are more inclined to think in blocks and visual metaphors (Hell most programmers draw out ideas constantly cause we do too) but any sufficient program eventually gets complicated enough that visual programming kind of breaks down unless it gets more and more abstract to make reusable components and modules that you can navigate too etc. I pushed at the time and I'm not even sure he remembers at this point but for augmenting text based programming and making what's happening more visual and real-time. Which seems to be some of the direction he's taking which is combining his great ideas in visualization with traditional text based programming environments. I was also a huge fan of Javascript as the lingua franca despite it's deficiencies because web based IDEs and examples were inherently so much more shareable than code you had to download and try (There could be ways around this such as a desktop repository of code viewer, but that's a friction point to people actually checking out demos/examples interactively ala JSBin as such.) I'm personally loving what Kahn academy is doing that John Resig credits Bret Victor's talk on Inventing on Principle (http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366) as a major inspiration. See article where he announces and explains their in browser interaction learning of CS course material: http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/ http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/ In closing to name a view limitations of most visual programming languages: the naming problem (Most parts of your system need to be named in order to be able to talk about them), text based is stronger at this. Instantiation of reuseable code is pretty abstract to do visually. Eventually all programming gets complicated enough that text based approach really is easier to work with. Not to mention all the tools you can't leverage comparitvely to text based such as version control, REPLs, etc. I guess I think visual programming is idealized and people are spending all this time learning something that isn't as useful to know in the long term compared to traditional programming because all the important platforms have much richer support for text based programming (iOS, linux, C/C++ for games). But combining visualization of code execution is the perfect balance and would lead to basically replacing much commenting with an actual intuitive visualization of runtime complex structures/state. And definitely real time feedback of tuning /visual parameters is great. In the game industry all of this is very standard and I do feel there is a little more awe for his work than would be given by your typical graphics, art tool, or demo scene programming devs. Most game development toosl for say level editing and animation are all highly visual and real time interactive. Same goes for any serious AI dev they have debugging tools for visualizing all planning for entities communication, path planning, animation states, and more. Anyway, just my thoughts. Still think Bret Victor is one of the most compelling thinkers in this space.

bunderbunder 14y ago
Just listened to a Herding Code interview with a guy who was using APL to get domain experts programming. He had a very interesting and elegant solution to the problem: You let the domain experts take charge of implementing their domain logic. But as soon as you hit a point where what they're doing needs to be shared with the rest of the company, you bring in a software engineer to sit down with them and review the code. They take charge of making sure it's robust and reliable, and work with the domain expert to refactor it into something that will be more maintainable. That seemed like a reasonable solution to me. And the thing that was striking was that he wasn't doing it with any newfangled visual languages or anything like that. It's already being done successfully in a business environment using APL.
edtechdev 14y ago
Intuitions and anecdotes are fine, but there is actual research on visual programming languages, as well as on computer science education. Visualizations, animations, and metaphors do help beginners learning programming and understand programming concepts. Scratch is currently probably the most well known tool for beginning students to use for programming (used with kindergartners all the way up to college freshmen).
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Some people are helped by visual metaphors. Others learn by hearing; other by reading. And then there was that thread about some people never, ever 'getting it' and being as hopeless after a semester class as the first day. I've even met folks who, after years of computer classes, still hadn't figured out that code is executed in sequence.
  - edtechdev 14y ago
    Actually a lot of research over the past few decades has shown there is not really evidence for 'learning styles' - that one person might be a visual learner, and another an auditory learning, and so forth. Learning isn't just about sensing (hearing, viewing), anyway, it is more about action. What are the students actually doing, and what can students do with a particular tool. Actually everything we perceive is tied to what we do (see: enactivism, embodied cognition, ecological psychology). Many students aren't 'getting' programming in CS classes partly because it is not taught well (if instructors switched from lectures to active learning techniques, student retention and learning might double or triple, based on research in other domains), partly because the tools themselves are not designed especially well or are not designed with beginners in mind (including python and java), partly because it is often taught devoid of any context (see, situated learning and situated cognition), partly because of low student self-efficacy (what you mentioned - thinking they just can't learn this stuff), and tons of other reasons.

bunderbunder 14y ago

Just listened to a Herding Code interview with a guy who was using APL to get domain experts programming. He had a very interesting and elegant solution to the problem: You let the domain experts take charge of implementing their domain logic. But as soon as you hit a point where what they're doing needs to be shared with the rest of the company, you bring in a software engineer to sit down with them and review the code. They take charge of making sure it's robust and reliable, and work with the domain expert to refactor it into something that will be more maintainable. That seemed like a reasonable solution to me. And the thing that was striking was that he wasn't doing it with any newfangled visual languages or anything like that. It's already being done successfully in a business environment using APL.

edtechdev 14y ago

Intuitions and anecdotes are fine, but there is actual research on visual programming languages, as well as on computer science education. Visualizations, animations, and metaphors do help beginners learning programming and understand programming concepts. Scratch is currently probably the most well known tool for beginning students to use for programming (used with kindergartners all the way up to college freshmen).

JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Some people are helped by visual metaphors. Others learn by hearing; other by reading. And then there was that thread about some people never, ever 'getting it' and being as hopeless after a semester class as the first day. I've even met folks who, after years of computer classes, still hadn't figured out that code is executed in sequence.
- edtechdev 14y ago
  Actually a lot of research over the past few decades has shown there is not really evidence for 'learning styles' - that one person might be a visual learner, and another an auditory learning, and so forth. Learning isn't just about sensing (hearing, viewing), anyway, it is more about action. What are the students actually doing, and what can students do with a particular tool. Actually everything we perceive is tied to what we do (see: enactivism, embodied cognition, ecological psychology). Many students aren't 'getting' programming in CS classes partly because it is not taught well (if instructors switched from lectures to active learning techniques, student retention and learning might double or triple, based on research in other domains), partly because the tools themselves are not designed especially well or are not designed with beginners in mind (including python and java), partly because it is often taught devoid of any context (see, situated learning and situated cognition), partly because of low student self-efficacy (what you mentioned - thinking they just can't learn this stuff), and tons of other reasons.