Although unrelated, this reminds me of the field of Computational semiotics and Semiotic engineering, in that it's an alternate way to understand computing. In

Although unrelated, this reminds me of the field of Computational semiotics and Semiotic engineering, in that it's an alternate way to understand computing. Instead of thinking of software as instructions to a computer, it treats programs as a thing that a human creates, and where other humans have to make sense of when they're using it. Female researcher C. S. de Souza has applied semiotics to Human-Computer Interaction,[1] and considers end-user applications as a "message" or "deputee" from the developer to the users. In this light, the designers weave a product based on their understanding about the needs of their users, embedding into it the messages that users should be able to grap, and would be useful for them. Following the thread about Urbit, I've found some programming languages created after alternate models of computation. Stack-based languages,[2] SK calculus,[3] the B,C,K,W system...[4] are all quite different from mainstram programming languages. They all look too mathematical; but if functional programming can be though of as syntactic sugar over the lambda calculus, and object orientation is modeled after Aristotelian categories, maybe a new kind of programming language could be created as a pretty face around these concepts, that makes them more intuitive and easier to apply; and maybe that language could use a different set of overarching concepts. (I hear that reactive programming and agent systems are getting quite popular, based on the success of Erlang for robust systems and its applicability to multiple processors). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_engineering [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack-oriented_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack-oriented_programming_lan... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B,C,K,W_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B,C,K,W_system