GlyphFeb 15

for all their flaws, one of the things that "agentic coding" tools seem to be legitimately doing is addressing a big gap in the programming tool space: specifically, introducing discoverability.

as a non-musician, I can open up GarageBand and make some beeps and boops and maybe eventually even get music out

as a non-artist, I can open up Photoshop and smudge around some colors by clicking on random tools

as a non-modeler, I can open up Blender and… okay bad example. I can open up Maya and

Show threadGlyphFeb 15

point is, most software has an idiom where its functions are visually exposed. you can figure out how to make a note or a pixel or whatever and then everything else can eventually flow from there.

but software tools have not crossed that chasm for some reason. there were things like Prograph which never caught on, I gather that there are things like "node-based editors" for shaders & game logic in tools like Unity and Unreal, but these are extremely niche use cases

Show threadGlyphFeb 15
if you wanna learn Python you gotta get a book or a blog post or some kind of tutorial system and learn about abstract symbol manipulation. nobody uses a tool like Scratch for actual programming and making the transition from Scratch to a "real" programming language involves *abandoning* the discoverable interface and moving towards the text-based abstract symbol-manipulation UI idiom that we all use
Show threadGlyphFeb 15
this is to say nothing of learning of the metacontext of, like, a Terminal app and remote UNIX server shells and docker containers or whatever. just "a text file with source code in it" is an intimidatingly stark UI. all the stuff to make this "easier" (i.e. vscode, etc) does not make its fundaments any easier to discover, there's no "if statement" or "while loop" button anywhere, even with the most advanced tools in the biz you gotta know what to type to get started
Show threadGlyphFeb 15
I had great hope that Apple's Shortcuts might end up doing this, because it's a node-based discoverable approach to real-life logic that a segment of users are forced to *actually use* to access some pretty useful platform interfaces. I have a bunch myself. But its environment replicates the mistakes of every other discoverable programming environment: it's almost comically tedious and difficult to program in with any kind of fluency.
Show threadGlyphFeb 15
everything is ten clicks and the keyboard focus is wack as hell. absolutely the polar opposite of other "pro" tools (graphics programs, video editors) which provide such a fine-grained level of macro and hotkey control that there are gigantic expensive physical decks that you can plug in just to drive those programs. but in service of being discoverable for new users, shortcuts (and all of its ilk) make actually *doing the discovering* and becoming a high-level power user uniquely unrewarding
Show threadGlyphFeb 15
whatever you think about Claude Code — and *believe me*, I have *thoughts* — it is a real tool structured in a way that working programmers can use it, that people DO use, that cares about things like where the keyboard focus lives and how to proceed to the next element of the workflow, but built in such a way that you can just tell it "make me a web app where you can log in with google and vote on what to have for lunch" and SOMETHING will happen, that might even work
Show threadSean Reifschneider
@glyph The example you give sounds like something that Claude Code right now can totally one-shot no problem. I'd throw up an example, but the Google login component requires setting up the OIDC stuff in Google. But, take for example a "icebreaker" picker I had Claude build last week ( https://icebreaker.linsomniac.com/ ) or a "teach me options trading" game ( https://trading.linsomniac.com/ )
icebreaker-temp

Feb 15 at 6:31pmWeb