Creating software is typically done in text-based environments—but would programming be more accessible with graphical programming tools? Maggie joins Mark and Adam to talk about the relative success of Scratch, Shortcuts, and Zapier; how to make the abstract visible; embodied metaphors; and the false duality of artistic versus logical thinkers. Plus: how to make blinking lights for your Burning Man art installation.

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Show notes

Maggie Appleton @mappletons
egghead.io
Centre for Computing History
Pacific Pinball Museum
Nintendo 64
the noughties or the aughts
React
Scratch
Zapier, IFTTT, Integromat
low-code / no-code
Rocky’s Boots
circuit diagrams
DrScheme
Origami Studio
Muse memo on infinite canvas with Origami screenshot
LabVIEW
Logic Pro, Reason
the environment in Logic
iOS Shortcuts (née Workflow)
console loggings
end-user programming: embodiment
VS Code, npm, Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, React hooks
cultural anthropology
Geroge Lakoff, Mark Johnson
embodied metaphors
Dan Abramov
Just Javascript
pointers in C
Redux actions
_why’s poignant guide to ruby
Learnable Programming
Edward Tufte, Visual Explanations, Beautiful Evidence
Graphviz DOT graphs
jigs in wordworking
Unity
episode with Geoffrey Litt
Flutter, SwiftUI
XState
Apparatus
direct manipulation
Dreamweaver
Interface Builder
Hacker News folk wisdom on visual programming
Adafruit
circuit debouncing with capacitors
walk uphill in the snow
Visual Programming Codex
Whole Code Catalog

37 // Visual programming with Maggie Appleton

Metamuse