Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!haven!umd5!carm From: carm@umd5.umd.edu (Rick Chimera) Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng Subject: Re: Visual Languages Keywords: visual programming Message-ID: <5350@umd5.umd.edu> Date: 21 Sep 89 15:27:47 GMT References: <2685@trantor.harris-atd.com> Reply-To: carm@umd5.umd.edu (Rick Chimera) Distribution: comp Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 35 In article <2685@trantor.harris-atd.com> ellery@trantor.harris-atd.com (Ellery Chan) writes: > > It seems that non-programmers are usually not used to breaking a >problem down into a sequence of operations. To be successful, I think >the set of operations available to the non-programmer would have to >be limited to very high level operations with very flexible methods >for combining those operations. Oh, come now! EVERY engineering discipline has a course like this by the end of the sophomore year. Even writers are taught to know your audience, break down the issue into subissues and answer questions that your reader will probably ask himself. All of these tasks are very much analogous (even the exact same!) to writing a good program, whether or not a visual language is used. So any person who has a somewhat logical mind could write a reasonable not to fouled up program given a great visual language. This could be evidenced by the popularity of the Macintosh. Don't tell me all those people now "programming" the Mac were previously programmers. Flames expected, but realize I'm not saying it's easy right now for a non-programmer to program, but this is mostly the fault of the lack of great visual programming languages, not the fault of the non-programmer being able to (not) approach the problem correctly (enough). Also, the anxiety of the non-programmer using the computer is enough to shake the logic right out of a person, which is exactly when one needs all the logic at one's disposal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | Rick "carm" Chimera | | Human Computer Interaction Laboratory, U of Md, College Park | | | | MHO's are just that, they are M, they are O's, and are not to be | | construed as fact or fiction or having anything to do with the | | HCIL. | ----------------------------------------------------------------------