[pilgrim0]

I agree. I think one way to achieve that is to first acknowledge the important distinction between modes of programming and levels of abstraction. See, even in programming, we’re still restricted to a given domain. A web dev does not program to the network stack, thus needs not to known NICs and TCP frames internals. The web dev only interacts with the lower levels via high level parameters (data) through the low level APIs, which are already done and settled, not directly with code. The same goes for each layer and domain. Now, expecting users to write actual code is not realistic or sustainable. What’s more reasonable is to imagine a scenario where users needs only to give the parameters for the functions which are already done and settled. So, composing super high level functions in an environment which disposes of an extensive library of utilities seems the way to go. Users already do parameterization everyday, such as when they press buttons and fill forms. What’s missing is simply an abstraction which gives them the power to compose those functions. Regarding the paradigmatic framing for an end user language, I think stack-based programming offers a superior model, because the context window is directly visible and easy to track and reason, but more than that, stack languages offer a good avenue for learning, since it’s the easiest model to teach by analogy, even physical analogies can be made. It boils down to just pushing and popping in a coherent order. The order of operations is in fact the program. Hard to beat this simplicity and universality.