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Re:Microsoft MakeCode by seanmcdirmid on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:06PM (#16174038)
Just a correction: you are writing code with visual programming, its just visual code instead of textual code. You haven't gotten rid of code.

VPLs are great for people who aren't programmers and don't wan to be programmers; e.g. Facebook designers using Quartz Composer or Orgami, game designers using Unreal blueprints, Blender, and so on.

Re:Microsoft MakeCode by anonytrary on Thursday January 18, 2018 @06:21AM (#16176272)
To be very pedantic, the context makes it clear I'm using "code" as shorthand to refer only to written programs.

True, visual code may well be a first class citizen in programming. As of today, there are still programs people would not write visually. It's a tool for simple procedural work, which could change as the ergonomics get even better.

Re:Microsoft MakeCode by seanmcdirmid on Thursday January 18, 2018 @12:51PM (#16179397)
There are codeless visual programming methods, like Pygmalion and Sketchpad, among others. So we shouldn't get confused with them.
Re:Microsoft MakeCode by anonytrary on Friday January 19, 2018 @12:02AM (#16184242)
Visual programming: Drag and drop nodes and edges to form a control-flow/compute graph.

Code: Python, JS, C++, etc.

I don't think this is confusing for our readers at all.