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by xjay 3803 days ago
Like many people, I think about this now and then, but I haven't done any work in that area. Ultimately, I picture a live environment, but not like Blueprint in UE4.

I expect we'll end up with a predominantly interactive approach to programming, most likely visual drag-and-drop style programming, in a live environment that knows common patterns, data structures, algorithms; giving real-time advice, showing native code output as you go, etc. Basically, you're molding the system while monitoring it under various contexts, and you're programming against data models.

Got a new Arduino board? Just drag and drop the data sheet model into your environment. It contains memory address information, read/write contexts, access protocols, contexts, etc for every component, and how they're connected. Now you design the rest of the logic.

"A programming language is a user interface as much as it is any other thing. Why have multiple ones? They are all Turing equivalent."—Alan C. Kay (see the talk for the context of the quote; starts at around 23:25)

"Rethinking CS Education | Alan Kay, CrossRoads 2015." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI

"Most computer people went into computing because they were disturbed by other human beings."—Alan C. Kay