Today's guest is Ella Hoeppner, who first came onto the radar of our community back in the fall when she released a web-based visual Clojure editor called Vlojure, with a captivating introduction video. I was immediately interested in the project because of the visual style on display — source code represented as nested circles; an earthy brown instead of the usual dark/light theme. But as the video progressed, Ella showed off a scattering of little ideas that each seemed strikingly clever and obvious in hindsight. You'd drag one of the circle "forms" to the bottom right to evaluate it, or to the bottom left to delete it. The sides of the screen are flanked by "formbars" that hold, well, whatever you want. You can reconfigure these formbars to your exact liking. Everything is manipulated with drag. The interface exudes a sense that it was designed with wholly different goals and tastes than what we usually see in visual programming projects — perfect subject matter for our show. This episode was sponsored by Glide, and the transcript was sponsored by Replit — thanks to them both for making this possible. The show notes (with copious links) and transcript are available here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/054Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scott Anderson has spent the better part of a decade working on end-user programming features for VR and the metaverse. He's worked on playful creation tools in the indie game Luna, scripting for Oculus Home and Horizon Worlds at Facebook, and a bunch of concepts for novel programming interfaces in virtual reality. Talking to Scott felt a little bit like peeking into what's coming around the bend for programming. For now, most of us do our programming work on a little 2D rectangle, with a clear split between the world around the computer and the one inside it. That might change — we may find ourselves inside a virtual environment where the code we write and the effects of running it happen in the space around us. We may find ourselves in that space with other people, also doing their own programming. This space might be designed, operated, and owned by a single megacorp with a specific profit motive. Scott takes us through these possibilities — how things are actually shaping up right now and how he feels about where they're going, having spent so much time exploring this space. This episode was sponsored by Glide, and the transcript was sponsored by Replit — thanks to them both for making this possible. The show notes (with copious links) and transcript are available here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/053Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The name Replit will be familiar to regular listeners of our show. The backstory and ambitions behind the project, however, I bet will be news to you. Amjad Masad, the founder and first programmer of Replit, is interviewed by Steve Krouse in this episode from the vault — recorded back in 2019, released for the first time today. Amjad shares the stories of how he taught himself to use a computer by secretly observing his father, his early experiments with Emscripten building VMs for the web, the founding of Replit, and how their community has exploded in popularity in recent years. Some of the conceptual discussions touch on Scheme, potential futures of visual programming, Sketchpad, and GRAIL. The transcript for this episode was sponsored, as ever, by Replit. The show notes and transcript are available right here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/052Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, I'll be talking to Toby Schachman, who many of you are surely familiar with thanks to an incredible string of projects he's released over the past decade, including Recursive Drawing back in 2012, Apparatus in 2015, and most recently Cuttle which opened to the public this past week. All of these projects superficially appear to be graphics editors, but by interacting with them you actually create a program that generates graphics. Their interfaces are wildly different from both traditional programming tools and traditional graphics apps. If you are not familiar with these projects, I strongly recommend that you actually go and play them (they all run in the browser), or watch the Strange Loop talk where Toby demos Apparatus and explains the thinking behind it. This episode was sponsored by Glide, and the transcript was sponsored by Replit — thanks to them both for making this possible. The show notes and transcript are available right here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/051Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mary Rose Cook is a programmer with.. just.. so many side projects, oh my — and, she works at Airtable. Mary created Gitlet, a version of Git in 1000 lines of JavaScript with extensive annotation. That might be her most well-known project, but of particular interest to our community are her programming environments Isla and Code Lauren. These projects explore syntax, learnability, execution visualization, and other surfaces of the development experience that I think we all would love to see reinvented. Mary and I talk about the design decisions behind these projects, naturally. But more importantly, we look at the ways they failed to achieve the goals Mary had for them, and what we should all be mindful of on our investigations into the future of computing. The discussion also touches on the theme of "escape hatches", picks up a few lessons in UI design from the video games Into The Breach and The Witness, and reflects on what people think programming is like before they actually learn what it really is. Lighthearted but full of wisdom. We have a new sponsor for today's episode: Glide. If you're excited about making end-user software development a reality, go to glideapps.com/jobs and apply to join their team. As ever, the transcript for this episode is sponsored by Replit. The show notes and transcript are available right here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/050Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ravi Chugh is a (recently-tenured 🎉) prof at the University of Chicago. He’s famous for leading the Sketch-n-Sketch project, an output-directed, bidirectional programming tool that lets you seamlessly jump back and forth between coding and directly manipulating your program’s output. The tool gives you two different projected editing interfaces for the same underlying program, so that you can leverage the different strengths of each. In the interview we talk about the principles of bidirectional editing, the team and history behind the Sketch-n-Sketch project, benchmarks and values that can be used to assess these sorts of novel programming interfaces, possible future directions for Sketch-n-Sketch and the field more broadly, and a bunch more. It’s a long one — almost two and a half hours — but it’s packed with thought and charm. The transcript for this episode was sponsored by Repl.it. Show notes and the full transcript are available here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/049Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"Metaphors are important here." There's a small handful of people that I've been requested again and again to interview on the Future of Coding podcast. Jennifer Jacobs is one of those people. Her work on Dynamic Brushes in particular, and parametric drawing in general, occupies a major intersection between disciplines and provides insights that we can all apply to our own work. This interview touches on childhood education, programming tools for both non-programmers and expert programmers, tangible interfaces, wearable and embodied computation, aesthetics, the relationship between academia and industry, means of evaluating the efficacy of projects, geometric encodings of first-order logic, symbolic representations, whether Scratch could exist outside MIT, and more. Jennifer does a wonderful job articulating the nature her own work, but also the works of her collaborators, peers, and influences, so that we come away with a great understanding for the broader spaces in which her research fits. Jennifer is already am important figure in our Future of Coding field, and I am very excited to follow her career and see all the places the impacts of her work will be felt. You'll notice right away that Steve is sitting in the interviewer chair this time. This is the first of a handful of episodes that Steve recorded in 2019 but didn't release. I'm planning to edit and release them throughout 2020, so you'll hear a bit more of Steve yet. The transcript for this episode was sponsored by Repl.it. Show notes and the full transcript are available here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/48Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Miller Puckette, creator of Max/MSP and Pure Data, discusses the evolution of visual programming in computer music. Topics include real-time sound generation, scheduling techniques, limitations of function sending in coding, computational abstractions, and the benefits of real-time code collaboration. Exploring graphical music creation software and design simplicity in Pure Data.

This was originally meant to be a little mini-episode halfway through March, with the next full episode coming at the start of April. Would you believe me if I told you that some things happened in the world that caused me to change my plans? Shocker, I know. Well, it's finally here. In today's episode, I'll reflect and commentate on the results of the first ever Future of Coding Community Survey. The show notes for this episode are full of graphs of the survey results, so be sure to take a look at that too. As ever, thanks to Repl.it for sponsoring those show notes.Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/futureofcodingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Devine Lu Linvega, the creator of Orca and a member of Hundred Rabbits, shares insights about his innovative visual programming environment for music creation. He discusses how Orca evolved from a video game into a live coding tool, highlighting its unique text-based interface and user-friendly design. Devine emphasizes the importance of community feedback in refining Orca's features and balancing accessibility with depth. The conversation also touches on Orca's applications in education and the artistic potential in programming, showcasing its vibrant intersection with music.