Are you familiar with LabView? It allows you to create a program graphically. Aside from simple programming in Mathematica during college (simple in the sense that while the math was advanced, the programming was not), that was how I learned to program. It was actually pretty awesome to be able to visualize the flow of data and control through a system graphical as you are building it. I could be wrong, but I feel it helped me conceptually when I moved into Ruby, Python, etc.
On the other hand; text is very expressive and powerful, at the end of the day. And when you get used to it, I think programming using text is a lot faster than using a graphical interface. Also, for me personally, I take pleasure in crafting the actual textual form of the code itself. Still, I'm very excited to see what will happen in the space of non textual programming in the future, in particular as it relates to education and visualization/analysis of programs and code. Chris On Friday, November 14, 2014 4:42:57 AM UTC-8, Thomas Huber wrote: > > Hi, here is an idea that has been in my mind for a while. I wonder what > you think about it. > > > In Clojure code is data, right? But when we program we manipulate flat > text files, not the data directly. > > Imagine your source code where a data structure (in memory). And > programming is done by manipulating this data structure. No text editor and > text files involved. > > Your editor directly manipulates the source data and later saves it on > disk (maybe as a text file). > > > These are the benefits I can think of: > > - It enables you to use any Clojure function to manipulate your source > „code“. Giving you hole new opportunities for refactoring.This functions > can be provides as library. > > > - Really nice auto complete. > > > - Visual programming. Source code can be represented in many different > ways (not just text) . The easiest example I can think of is color. It can > be represented as text of course (#23FF02) > > but that’s a quite bad interface for humans. Why not display the actual > color and provide a color picker? Or what about music notes? Or Math > formulars? Or what about a tree view to move and rename functions like > files? > > This could all be implemented in a way that every library can ship there > own „views“. I think this „views“ are basically macros that are not limited > to text. > > > - You don’t have to worry that you text files are in the same state as > your JVM (when developing interactive). You only work on your sourcedata > and it gets loaded into the JVM automatically. > > > - Answer questions about your source code. What is the most called > function? Who depends on this namespace? Where is this function used? What > is the biggest function? Thinks like that become easy. Again you can ship > this queries as a library. > > > > > The drawback is you can’t simply program using any text editor. You need a > special tool. But we have that anyway (syntax highlighting, paredit etc.). > Nobody programs using a bare text editor. > > > Maybe this idea is not new? What do you think? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
