[pjc50]

> I think working with data is more likely to be useful and successful. Look at things like Visual Basic - a form designer is effectively manipulating a stored data structure which defines how a runtime data structure is going to get constructed.

I think data manipulation interfaces are a good line of reasoning to investigate, but form designers aren't that, they're just for controlling visual placement of controls. The real MVP of dataflow manipulation programming for non-programmers is Excel.

[barrkel]

Form designers are editing a data structure. It's not just visual placement of controls; it's the settings on those controls: content, appearance, behaviour, event bindings. And not just controls, also components.

VB and Delphi have components, non-visual controls that live on design surfaces, where their properties can be edited. Things like database connections and table connectors, which can further be linked up with data aware controls. Whole simple form-based CRUD applications can be built without any code at all, merely by wiring together components.

The wiring is data.