I agree. What I meant with my comment was that the visual syntax shouldn't simply be a direct visual representation of the syntax tree, because if that's all it is, I'd rather just write in a Lisp with a graphical tree visualisation generator.
I definitely like the idea of having many possible views of the code, where a traditional textual language is just one of those.
> a few examples come to mind
That sounds quite similar to what LightTable attempted to achieve. Its nice and useful and I want to see more of it, but I don't think its far enough, at least for a discussion on visual languages ;)
> it always reminds me to re-study the work of Douglas Englebart, Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, Seymour Papert, Bret Victor
Absolutely! They've been a major influence on my own line of thinking on the subject.
I really like this description of a possible language / IDE, where textual code is the "canonical" representation of the program, with visual layers of interaction to manipulate higher abstractions.
At the bottom, I still think it would be an abstract syntax tree, with textual and visual "views" into the program. As I've got VS Code open in front of me, a few examples come to mind:
- Minimap: a condensed visual overview and navigation of code structure
- Color picker: hover on a color value in code, and select from a color wheel, adjust transparency, with preview
- Type annotations: hover on a variable, function, class instance to see a tooltip showing their type definitions, reference link to source
These are all various ways to represent and interact with the same underlying code, and I imagine many more possibilities exist to extend the "visual programming" aspect.
A quick idea as an example, there could be a mode/view to see the entire program and its modules/dependency tree visually, move classes around, rename/refactor methods..
Whenever "codeless software" and similar topics come up, it always reminds me to re-study the work of Douglas Englebart, Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, Seymour Papert, Bret Victor [0].
[0] http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction