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Ask HN: It would be nice to see a useful visual language

4 points by pipeline_peak ↗ HN
When I look at the iPad today, I want to say this is how computing should be done (think Dynabook). But it’s merely a consumer centric device without a keyboard attached.

Sure there are visual languages for kids like Scratch. There are even production ready ones like Unreals Blueprints. But there’s nothing general purpose in Pythons sort of way.

It would be nice if the iPad had a way to make programs through drag and drop UI. Define records and functions and use libraries without the need for typing. I feel like instead we just have Chat-GPT as a prompt.

9 comments

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eimrine
Don't underpreciate both kids and text. Visual languages are lame but kids are not so. Every kids' version of anything typically is lame. Touchtyping kid doesn't need Scratch to make programs with ease, but please don't insist on learning qwerty.

> When I look at the iPad today, I want to say this is how computing should be done

You may say hardware for end-user, but don't say Apple does computing right.

082349872349872
https://snap.berkeley.edu is pretty lispy, with a nod to APL via array primitives. Is that gp enough for you?
beardyw
Isn't this why we don't use hieroglyphs. Turning complex ideas into pictures has it's limitations.

Ironically, whilst typing "turning", my keyboard suggested a wheel icon which I accidentally clicked! Sadly I doubt HN supports that.

GianFabien
AFAIK Apple forbid apps from providing local programming capabilities. You can't even do a JS console in Safari without attaching to a Mac and using Apple's development tools.

Once we go beyond Apple ecosystem, there have been dozens of visual/graphical programming environments. Good examples are Blender 3D modelling, special effects in music and video production tools. The downside is that "diagrams" quickly become very complex and hard to navigate.

For a good overview of the space, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language

drdeca
Maybe they do now, but at one point I had a “Python2IDE” application on my iphone. (Well, technically it is still on my list of installed applications, but it isn’t compatible with the version of the OS I have installed now. It says it needs to be updated to match the OS, but there’s no updated version available.)

So, either it was allowed at one point, or it slipped through the cracks