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Maybe I'm a pessimist but I think that programming is and always will be a process of writing text line-by-line on a text editor. Also I'm calling BS on this:

Maybe I'm a pessimist but I think that programming is and always will be a process of writing text line-by-line on a text editor. Also I'm calling BS on this: "[...]is a sort of visual mechanism for helping people not necessarily familiar with code, like executives, managers and others[...]be able to understand at a glance what developers are doing" Bringing executives and managers in the development process is a recipe for disaster, there's a separation of roles for a reason. There's always chat about programming being stuck in the '80s but I think that with the recent developments and improvements in compilers, programming languages and toolchain the process of programming is anything but stuck in the '80s.

doktrin 13y ago
> There's always chat about programming being stuck in the '80s but I think that with the recent developments and improvements in compilers, programming languages and toolchain the process of programming is anything but stuck in the '80s. I tend to agree with this. The whole thing does feel a bit like the "flying car syndrome", in that we had at one point envisioned that by this point in history we would be dictating concepts by thought to machines that would automagically transcribe them into machine code. It's a matter of expectations and projections outpacing reality.
pjmorris 13y ago
> Bringing executives and managers in the development process is a recipe for disaster, there's a separation of roles for a reason. In one sense, yes. Having people who aren't intimately familiar with a code base/data base decreeing how things must be done is... challenging. On the other hand, executives and managers do tend to take a proprietary interest in how people's time and the organization's money is being spent, and sometimes this does spill over in to technical matters. One way to empirically assess this would be to survey the executive and managerial offices around you, and see whether there are diagrams drawn there by technical staff, perhaps on a whiteboard, or a piece of paper, or in some electronic form. If this is the case, you may already have the disaster you fear... or perhaps it's just the way of the world. To my thinking, sharper tools to assist in conveying technical points accurately to non-technical people is an underserved and valuable market, even if you get rid of the snake-oil salesmen.
delinka 13y ago
I've been writing code as text line-by-line for decades. I think code visualization tools are key to letting those with a higher-level concern have high-level access. Let's go with the car analogy: most drivers only ever need high-level access to their cars- accelerator, decelerator, directional control, etc. Some can "drop down a level" and change their own oil. I feel that once we (the programmers and computer scientists) get some more experience, we'll start designing our systems (including programming languages) for such high-level access. Think Star Trek and the 'ambiguous' verbal commands given by characters to the computer to complete a task. Somewhat tangential to this, I have a similar problem with math education. We don't show students the high-level uses of math and then work into the depths of the concepts and mechanics of producing a result. Instead, we teach them to memorize the mechanics and for many, the understanding never materializes. We expect these students to build their car from scratch.
- RogerL 13y ago
  That was not my experience in regards to math.
pshc 13y ago
The future is hybrid. Source code will become non-textual in storage and VCS, but our editors (code lenses) will remain looking and feeling like text editors. (The danger in trying to invent a next-gen non-plaintext programming environment is the siren song of flow charts, mouse-only editors, XML serializations, and other dead ends.)
jmatthews 13y ago
I respectfully disagree with the major premise of your post. In every decent hacker there is a bit of masochist. Toolchain development is always the least glamorous role in the company and one of the most important. In the game industry you can usually tell the difference between successful studios and finger crossers by examining their toolchains. I'm not saying that "this" is the big step forward, but any technology that maps more directly to our mental model or increases the pool of competent people that can interact in it advances the science of computation. If i were to point to a specific example I'd say Kismet in the Unreal Engine is the best real world implementation I've seen. It redrew the line between artist and technical artist.

doktrin 13y ago

> There's always chat about programming being stuck in the '80s but I think that with the recent developments and improvements in compilers, programming languages and toolchain the process of programming is anything but stuck in the '80s. I tend to agree with this. The whole thing does feel a bit like the "flying car syndrome", in that we had at one point envisioned that by this point in history we would be dictating concepts by thought to machines that would automagically transcribe them into machine code. It's a matter of expectations and projections outpacing reality.

pjmorris 13y ago

> Bringing executives and managers in the development process is a recipe for disaster, there's a separation of roles for a reason. In one sense, yes. Having people who aren't intimately familiar with a code base/data base decreeing how things must be done is... challenging. On the other hand, executives and managers do tend to take a proprietary interest in how people's time and the organization's money is being spent, and sometimes this does spill over in to technical matters. One way to empirically assess this would be to survey the executive and managerial offices around you, and see whether there are diagrams drawn there by technical staff, perhaps on a whiteboard, or a piece of paper, or in some electronic form. If this is the case, you may already have the disaster you fear... or perhaps it's just the way of the world. To my thinking, sharper tools to assist in conveying technical points accurately to non-technical people is an underserved and valuable market, even if you get rid of the snake-oil salesmen.

delinka 13y ago

I've been writing code as text line-by-line for decades. I think code visualization tools are key to letting those with a higher-level concern have high-level access. Let's go with the car analogy: most drivers only ever need high-level access to their cars- accelerator, decelerator, directional control, etc. Some can "drop down a level" and change their own oil. I feel that once we (the programmers and computer scientists) get some more experience, we'll start designing our systems (including programming languages) for such high-level access. Think Star Trek and the 'ambiguous' verbal commands given by characters to the computer to complete a task. Somewhat tangential to this, I have a similar problem with math education. We don't show students the high-level uses of math and then work into the depths of the concepts and mechanics of producing a result. Instead, we teach them to memorize the mechanics and for many, the understanding never materializes. We expect these students to build their car from scratch.

RogerL 13y ago
That was not my experience in regards to math.

pshc 13y ago

The future is hybrid. Source code will become non-textual in storage and VCS, but our editors (code lenses) will remain looking and feeling like text editors. (The danger in trying to invent a next-gen non-plaintext programming environment is the siren song of flow charts, mouse-only editors, XML serializations, and other dead ends.)

jmatthews 13y ago

I respectfully disagree with the major premise of your post. In every decent hacker there is a bit of masochist. Toolchain development is always the least glamorous role in the company and one of the most important. In the game industry you can usually tell the difference between successful studios and finger crossers by examining their toolchains. I'm not saying that "this" is the big step forward, but any technology that maps more directly to our mental model or increases the pool of competent people that can interact in it advances the science of computation. If i were to point to a specific example I'd say Kismet in the Unreal Engine is the best real world implementation I've seen. It redrew the line between artist and technical artist.