[ibdknox]

This milestone is very much about making a programming environment, so you're right, that's still code. Though to address this strawman, compare that to what you would write in Java or even Python. Some of the best comments we've gotten is when we've shown people eve code and told them to ignore the symbols, just read the words. Their eyes really open up and they tell us pretty exactly what the block is doing. No, it's not all the way there, but that's a big step forward.

In any case, check out our followup on what Eve is and isnt [1] - we're under no delusion that this is the end user story... yet :)

[1]: http://programming.witheve.com/deepdives/whateveis.html

[sanderjd]

The "ignore the symbols and just read the words" idea is part of Ruby's promise as well. In practice, I don't personally find it very satisfying, because it's easy to write things that read like they do one thing, but actually do something else. So you have to train yourself to ignore what it says until you figure out what it does.

I think the better metric to optimize for is how easy it is to go from seeing a piece of code for the first time to having a mental model for what its runtime behavior will be. Do you think Eve is strong on this in addition to its "readability"?

[cmontella]

> I think the better metric to optimize for is how easy it is to go from seeing a piece of code for the first time to having a mental model for what its runtime behavior will be

Actually yes, we've seen some evidence of this. In one instance, I was demonstrating the syntax of Eve to someone who really only had experience programming HTML, and he was able to point out a bug in my code without even running the program.

I believe this is because the syntax is very minimal, there are very few core language operations (only 9), and the underlying data model is completely consistent throughout the language (everything is a record). You can only query and update records. When you only have a few consistent tools, you can wield each one with greater confidence.

Also, in Eve if you want to know what a block does you can just ask for the output right next to the block, so there's no guessing. You can look at it as text, a table, a chart, or any number of visualizations you can come up with. When you have the output and the source code right next to each other, updating in real time, and recompiling automatically as your code changes, you can get a better sense for what each individual part does in a block of code. You can even point at a specific element and ask "What draws this". We hope that all of these features will encourage new users to feel the freedom to explore, make mistakes, and build their own mental model of how Eve works, without having to understand set theory.

[sanderjd]

Thanks! I hoped that was the case.

[jimbokun]

Fair enough, but I thought an earlier goal of Eve was to bring programming to non-programmers? Did that change as Eve evolved, or am I just mis-remembering?

[ibdknox]

It is, but it's a multi-step process. :) Checkout the three milestones at the bottom of the post: http://programming.witheve.com/#justataste