[speedplane]

From my brief reading of this, the idea is to link programming concepts to more understandable concepts, primarily using aesthetic and story-telling techniques that many are already familiar with. A noble goal, except the variation among people's aesthetic preferences are huge.

Would you have to have two programming languages for two people who like sci-fi versus history? Or how about teen drama versus high art?

Linking programming to these extremely subjective aesthetics is a worthy effort to make programming more accessible, but one that is not entirely workable across personal preferences.

[theqabalist]

The idea is not to hide design details in specific settings. The idea is first and foremost that characters in a story are entities people reason easily about. The story example is not an example of how to design a system, it is an example of how a story captures the same essence as a possible design but enables more accessible reasoning.

When I employ the concept of narrative I am not specifically talking about common fiction. I am talking about the abstract idea of communicative flows within groups, which combine to form a story. You and I having this conversation is narrative, and forms a story about what you may or may not say next in order to navigate understanding of the underlying concept. I am arguing that this natural process is replicable in systems design where components have a simplified skeuomorphic version of this type of interchange.