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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. There was a big push at some point in the development of personal computers to make programming something that even nontechnical persons could do. Think hypercard, or even smalltalk. A way for regular users to program their computer to do something else.

That's long gone. There's no such tools (that I'm aware of) in the mainstream for smartphones or even computers. You say two things: "they support so much more than TI-basic", well yes and that's the problem. They are developer's tools, not user-programmer tools. If you want to write a quick program to help you in some task you don't have a quick BASIC-like tool to do that. And you also say "a feature that appeals only to a tiny subset of the market", again a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no tools for non-technical users to program their devices, so only a minority of users do want to program their devices (or even realise that they can do so!)

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Which is funny, because I bet Apple could re-engineer hypercard for iOS and people would absolutely love it. Would probably attract more power users even, if they gave more more granular control (I realize this is anathema to Apple at this point). There are definitely ways to let users choose how "dangerous" to make themselves.

It's very interesting that you make the distinction between a 'developer' and a 'user-programmer'. I've never thought of it that way before, but I've come to the realization that all the programs I write are not written specifically for my computer, my computer is simply one of many compile targets and platforms which they can run on. It would be incredible if I could actually program the normal operations of my computer from user space, instead of writing programs for an abstract x86_64 device which, at runtime, happens to be my computer.

I suspect the biggest hurdle in this discussion is agreeing upon what we mean by a programming language for end users, or even what qualifies as a programming language.

Some examples that I can think of: Automator, AppleScript, Swift Playgrounds are all intended to be accessible to end users. Spreadsheets typically provide programming-like constructs (without resorting to lower level scripting). There are versions of BASIC for most platforms (including Android and the Nintendo Switch). The last time I looked into it Smalltalk (via Squeak) was still being maintained for computers and it looks like there are Smalltalk implementations available for Android.

While it can legitimately be pointed out that most of these options have to be sought out, they are a subset of what is available. While I agree that people not realizing that their devices can be programmed is a hurdle, a large number of people do realize that it is actually software that controls the operation of their devices yet have very little interest in writing their own programs.

While web based single page applications (SPA) are hardly a "sweet solution ", any kid can view source and take one apart.

I believe that devices are at least as accessible today as they were in 1981. Today's systems are phenomenally complicated, but you can start making them do stuff with virtually no extra parts. The web browsers are free. Tutorials online are free. Way better resources these days.

Apple's Shortcuts app brings up a "scripting" option in the "new action" menu. It's rather capable.

Yeah, the programming apps I have installed are a fruit of my imagination.

Do they expose everything? No.

Are they good enough for learning purposes and basic coding on the go?

More than enough.

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