Evidence In Support of Visual Programming
2025-12-16
At 53:32 of this video, Alan Kay points to evidence in support of visualization.
Kay cites Hademard (if I heard correctly) showing that most great mathematicians do not think in terms of mathematical symbology. Kay emphasizes the aspect of visualization.
If you continue watching, you will see a clip from the Reasoner Report (Reasoner of 60 Minutes fame) showing how Timothy Gallwey could teach someone how to play tennis in 20 minutes.
[aside: a golf teacher once informed me that Gallwey wrote the best book on golf. It is called “The Inner Game of Tennis”[sic]]
It is my observation that “programming” and computer operating systems as we know them, encourage “Self 1” thinking and strongly interfere with “Self 2” thinking.
Ostensibly, programming isn’t a physical sport, but I find that I design programs better when I’m “in the zone” (“flow” state) and when I’m not constantly interrupted by irrelevant issues like needing to choose file pathnames for storing work and other Waterfall-like considerations.
When I built hardware, the results were much more reliable than with any software that I build. I believe that this is due to a problem with programming notation and striving to make everything sequential and synchronous.
See Also
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The industrial automation is a field where visual programming languages are extensively used. In 1969, the first PLC was invented (Modicon 084). The purpose was to substitute the hardwired control panels, composed by electromechanical relays, which manage boolean signals (on/off). For this reason, the first programming language invented for PLC was the ladder logic, which resembles the hardwired control logic of electromechanical control panels. The ladder logic diagrams have some interesting features:
_ the horizontal lines ("rungs") are concurrently executed.
_ each coil can activate a very high number of on/off contacts (like the fan-out concept in the electronic circuits).