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Comment by davedx | Hacker News Reader

Fantastic! We need more of this kind of thinking. "No computer required" should be the default, not the exception.

I've been playing with some ideas in my head for a while now that we should be able to build most apps this way, and not just prototypes. If we can extract the default widgets and behaviour from applications and make them reusable and connectable without code, then we'd be taking steps towards a real revolution.

I am really excited about the direction we're going in with products and tech like this.

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I agree this is a great idea for prototypes but I disagree that this is a way to build anything but the most basic of apps. There are way to many subtle choices that we make as developers, that require knowledge and reasoning, and an understanding of what we are trying to build. Visual programming has been tried multiple times, but it has never had any mainstream success.

Blueprints in UnrealEngine4 I think are a great example of successful visual programming.

Thanks for the pointer. Never used Unreal Engine but just watched some of their Blueprint demos. Pretty cool stuff!

The vast majority of programming languages never get mainstream success.

It's one of those problems where execution is extremely important.

Look at the game development world. There have been countless "game makers" that saw limited, niche success if that, usually because they were not powerful or expressive enough.

Then along came Unity.

Of course, you still have to write game scripts in Unity... but you do a whole lot of your work in the Unity IDE, dragging and dropping, clicking to attach things or to change properties, tweaking animations, colours and materials.

It is a revolutionary way of making games, and is rightfully enjoying huge success.

We need (at least!) a Unity for application development, and we need it yesterday.

But instead we have... Sublime Text, LightTable and Visual Studio. All ways of writing enhanced text.

Thanks! I think you're right, it's about empowering anyone to bring their ideas to life, regardless of tech or design skill.

We're seeing Marvel being used to teach kids how to make apps https://twitter.com/futurice/status/449186891837890560 massively exciting!

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