Never heard of him before, and I can't tell if he's a crackpot or going to invent the next big thing or both.
It seems like his whole thing is allowing people to access new thoughts that they couldn't before.
I'm not really familiar with that kind of almost psychonautic inspired approach to programming, so I don't really have a good understanding of his vision. But it seems like a few tools have parts of his vision.
FORTH is famous for small programs that almost redefine the language itself and can say a lot in less than a page. Seems very relevant, but I don't know anything about it besides the basic outline and history.
LISP seems to have some of the same characteristics. Maybe a live code environment for FORTH would be of interest?
I'd argue Excel and co are probably the biggest success in live general purpose data manipulation, and probably the only ones out there I actually have any interest in.
Spreadsheets are also an amazing example of something uniquely digital, that's not quite just a paper emulator, and isn't just some crazy impractical experiment.
Spreadsheets are pretty amazing when you think about it.
Really the big thing that makes them special is the idea that you can put an =expression wherever you could put a value, embedded in a normal, consumery app that otherwise works similar to other software.
The other thing that makes it special is that it's highly constrained. You get a 2D grid of cells. Creativity loves constraint and they seem to have the perfect amount.
It seems average users are perfectly capable of cramming their use case into a set of high level primitives. That's different from almost every other "Code for everyone" system that just tries to make low level primitives accessible.
It's easier to use the wrong framework to do something than build the right thing with raw materials.
From that people who are not programmers at all run half the financial system. And it works. The world has not exploded.
It might be almost never the ideal choice, but then again, I don't think any DIY programming is likely the ideal choice when off the shelf special purpose apps exist, I'd never suggest anyone but a megacorp do their own booking and billing app or something.
I can't think of a single other tool that lets people who would never program, and hate programming... write programs. All the other tools are just things an average person could learn. But they won't, because they'll wonder why. And they'll be right, because they probably don't want to spend enough time with it to be able to do anything they couldn't do in a Google Sheet.
Not only that, it's a live environment that's truly practical, it's not just a tool for thinking, it's a tool for a subset of the same stuff Python might do.
It's something I use on occasion, and frequently use =expressions in other contexts.
It might not be truly general purpose, but it sure is impressive.
One of my crackpot ideas is a novel type of hypermedia, a bit like the semantic web but without the open world assumption. The mental model and user interface can be something like Mathematica. It should be a tool for advanced knowledge workers and not software engineers.
It seems like his whole thing is allowing people to access new thoughts that they couldn't before.
I'm not really familiar with that kind of almost psychonautic inspired approach to programming, so I don't really have a good understanding of his vision. But it seems like a few tools have parts of his vision.
FORTH is famous for small programs that almost redefine the language itself and can say a lot in less than a page. Seems very relevant, but I don't know anything about it besides the basic outline and history.
LISP seems to have some of the same characteristics. Maybe a live code environment for FORTH would be of interest?
I'd argue Excel and co are probably the biggest success in live general purpose data manipulation, and probably the only ones out there I actually have any interest in.
Spreadsheets are also an amazing example of something uniquely digital, that's not quite just a paper emulator, and isn't just some crazy impractical experiment.
Spreadsheets are pretty amazing when you think about it.
Really the big thing that makes them special is the idea that you can put an =expression wherever you could put a value, embedded in a normal, consumery app that otherwise works similar to other software.
The other thing that makes it special is that it's highly constrained. You get a 2D grid of cells. Creativity loves constraint and they seem to have the perfect amount.
It seems average users are perfectly capable of cramming their use case into a set of high level primitives. That's different from almost every other "Code for everyone" system that just tries to make low level primitives accessible.
It's easier to use the wrong framework to do something than build the right thing with raw materials.
From that people who are not programmers at all run half the financial system. And it works. The world has not exploded.
It might be almost never the ideal choice, but then again, I don't think any DIY programming is likely the ideal choice when off the shelf special purpose apps exist, I'd never suggest anyone but a megacorp do their own booking and billing app or something.
I can't think of a single other tool that lets people who would never program, and hate programming... write programs. All the other tools are just things an average person could learn. But they won't, because they'll wonder why. And they'll be right, because they probably don't want to spend enough time with it to be able to do anything they couldn't do in a Google Sheet.
Not only that, it's a live environment that's truly practical, it's not just a tool for thinking, it's a tool for a subset of the same stuff Python might do.
It's something I use on occasion, and frequently use =expressions in other contexts.
It might not be truly general purpose, but it sure is impressive.