Getting Started with Red (2016)
redprogramming.com
redprogramming.com
You can be so productive in Red with so little experience that it's almost irresponsible not to use it and promote it.
If you could write a program that replaced you, would you?
But I cannot echo your broader point enough; I'm in the odd position of being very familiar with coding but I'm not directly paid to produce it (I teach IT) and (dare I say more than most everyone around here) it's obvious to me that coding could be a LOT better, easier, more user-friendly, and is unlikely to get there for this reason. I don't want to take food out of peoples mouths, but there's so much of this that we could do better. Could probably call it the Hypercard problem.
(And again, the charge I want to make here is that there is a subconscious blindness to it.)
'A Modern Incarnation of Rebol
'Red is based conceptually and syntactically on Rebol ("Relative Expression Based Object Language"). Rebol is a commercial, closed source programming language created in the late 1990's which aimed to be the most productive, readable, and concise development tool available. Its main goal was to reduce code complexity and to remove bloated infrastructure found in typical software development stacks.'
Looks like the pitch is to use this instead of a huge collection of Excel docs to run your business, with the key feature being it's a simple enough language you can train anyone capable of learning Excel to use Red instead.
Oh and fun little tidbit--for at least a decade+, Carl Sassenrath used Rebol in his work to maintain multiple channels of OTA television access for everybody in the little valley where I live. I was surprised when I learned about this from some local techies.