I think there's a happy middle ground between extensibility/flexibility and simplicity. You can use a GUI for simpler stuff while still allowing code for the complex stuff.

In moviepy's case I wouldn't use python to do describe simple video transformations as shown above, I'd use YAML. Unlike python, it's something that you can build by hand, can easily get a GUI or script to output and if you put it in version control you'll get readable diffs.

At the same time if you made every "video project" include the source media, the YAML file describing transformations used to build the output and by default include a stub 'plugin' python file, you could reduce the friction between people with coding skills seeing the need for an ad hoc custom transformation and creating it.

While I never used it, it sounds like HyperCard actually did achieve both goals: Ease of use for non-technical users, and wysiwyg GUI design + use.

We used to have pretty small, simple languages in the past that were very effective in driving a simple text-based or stock-UI-component interface. These simple languages aren't difficult for people to be introduced to, preferably by accessible examples & demonstrations, and do just enough to be practical for common uses.

'Future people' will all be 'technically strong' by today's standards at least. They will expect their tools to be powerful and have a whole childhood to familiarize and internalise concepts and paradigms. Pointy clicky is not going to cut it, not for anything worth doing. Of course there will be toys, of which I enjoy many, I'm not talking about those.

The only intuitive interface is the nipple, everything else is learned. It also seems you got stuck on the notion that 'programming languages' are hard. That does not need to be the case, not for native talkers. And REPL and 'wysiwyg' are certainly not mutually exclusive things, http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/jakevdp.github.com/downloads... that seems pretty what you see is what you get to me.

I wonder where you get that prediction from. We've came from windows GUIs over single apps on mobile phones to "just tell the machine what you want". The development goes further away from consoles and "typing" of any kind.

Consumers want GUIs. Show and don't tell is the way it goes.

I believe that in order to grow strong enough programming skills, one has to have strong enough analytical skills. Those can also be learned but are much more of a personality trait.

As for notebook being wysiwyg, I also disagree. That would be like having a markup editor with a rendering window. Document creator like the "painting/sculptor" metaphor, where they interact directly with their creation. Want to modify a part of a document? click on it.