Real world visual programming

I saw an interesting demo at SPLASH of an end-user visual programming language: Cloud Extend. There were two main interesting points. First, it is used to build plugins for Salesforce. Major web applications like Salesforce, and especially Facebook, are becoming software platforms unto themselves. This is a great target domain for end-user programming tools.

The second interesting thing was how radical they are in conceptually simplifying the language. For example, they tried eliminating variable binding, essentially using only global variables. That turned out not to work, so they brought back a limited form of binding. I really like that they are going at conceptual simplicity rather than the focus on syntactic simplicity that most end-user work seems stuck in. For example, rather than use standard nested if-then-else blocks like everyone else, they have imposed a global decision-tree structure on the program. Whether or not that works, it is the kind of radical simplification we need to make progress. I also like that they are working with real end users, and adjusting based on what works. This language is a valuable data-point on how simple we can make an end-user programming language, and has some fresh thinking. Worth following.