On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, _why wrote (lots of good stuff I trimmed and):
Syntax is often suggested as a problem area in textual languages,
but in our study users reported that syntax errors were few once
they were familiar… Textual languages are compact, efficient, and
can be developed in less time than graphical languages.
-- Bonnie Nardi
(She goes on to say that textual languages are "compact" when
they focus on ten basic commands and branch out from there.)
I wonder if there'd be a benefit in producing a tool that produces
the correct syntax for {one, the beginner, ...} as per Alice
http://www.alice.org/ or StarLogo. The whole thing about doing that
is to hide the existence of syntax errors, by making them impossible.
ivilization advances by extending the number of important operations
we can perform without thinking. —Alfred North Whitehead
Quoted in
"Ubiquitous Automation", Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas.
http://media.pragprog.com/articles/jan_02_auto.pdf
Creating a system that still permits the wild magic of metaprogramming
with which _Why has graced us, might be more difficult.
Hugh
