[asdff]

Research has shown you focus more writing than typing. Imagine if you could program by rough drafting how your function works on paper. Like with arrows and all sorts of messy things connecting the structure of your code, but entirely understandable to another human what your function was to do without needing to understand a lick of code.

Take this example(1) from the R subreddit about how to do matrix math, and the arcane R foo required to actually do something that is pretty simply explained in OPs image(2) to anyone with zero background in R or programming at all. Now, imagine how much more productive the world would be if the computer could take an instruction in a readable form like the OPs image, rather than the R jargon code actually needed by the computer to do the math described in the image. People would be learning to write their own functions right along side learning how to do math on paper. Instead, people today pay six figures and spend four years to learn how to turn the math they learned by hand in high school into something that can be ran on a computer, same as it was 30 years ago.

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/rprogramming/comments/kn2rgb/how_do...

2. https://i.redd.it/ngxi8665zb861.jpg

[jcelerier]

> Research has shown you focus more writing than typing. Imagine if you could program by rough drafting how your function works on paper. Like with arrows and all sorts of messy things connecting the structure of your code, but entirely understandable to another human what your function was to do without needing to understand a lick of code.

I've worked in a company where programs were originally written with Max/MSP which is exactly that. It was muuuch harder to decipher for other humans than normal C++ & Javascript code.

Everyone I know using patcher tools end up switching to real programming after some years, and being much more happy like that.

[valenterry]

Such things have been tried. They usually fail because of underestimating the amount of ambiguity, complexity manamagement and performance problems.

SQL came pretty close - I mean, it was specifically designed for non-developers. Guess who's mostly using not nowadays.

[SomeoneFromCA]

I actually thought about buying a Wacom, because I make so many small scratch notes I throw away afterwards, to later find myself really needing them again. Besides, having hand drawn diagrams together with the code may serve as excellent comments.

[criddell]

Embedding diagrams in code seems like such a no-brainer. You can do it with a third-party extension in Visual Studio, but it’s still clunky and too hard to use.

This should be a basic thing that IDEs help you do.