This is really cool! The author might want to check on papers on Forms/3, a spreadsheet programming language developed in the 90s (and you can run it if you have a HP/UX or Solaris system lying around). I’m busy designing my own spreadsheet based system ATM, with the idea that abstraction can occur gradually (like gradual typing), so concrete expressions can be turned into more abstract ones via refactoring actions (Jonathan Edwards has been active in this area also, and Bret Victor has that whole “create by abstracting” section in his learnable programming essay). Early work at https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AMMhHFdi9qhLJ6M&cid=51... but I’ve completely changed the design at this point.

Anyways, nice to see more action in this space!

Author here. I've studied Forms/3 a bit! It's a good reference.

Flogo from Chris Hancock is also good to know about: https://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/ch-phd.pdf

I really like what you did with the nested grid layout, it’s totaly an idea worth stealing!

Flogo 2 and Hancock’s dissertation are my goto for live programming origin work. There has all been some recent out of MIT (called object-sheets). Also, Fowler’s illustrative programming post helps to put spreadsheet programming into better context: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/IllustrativeProgramming.html.

Also, here is a recent survey I wrote up about the field a couple of years ago: https://conf.researchr.org/getImage/live-2016/orig/LIVE_2016...

You might find it useful.

Oh hi Sean I didn't see that it was you. We worked at CDG at the same time!

Thanks for the links and survey. I think something like "illustrative programming" is going to be really important. There's already some evidence of this in the observation that programming in Flowsheets is just so pleasant. I'm working on a couple demos that try bring this pleasantness to other types of programs.

Ah? What lab? I regret never actually getting to meet everyone. It makes sense that we all had similar ideas about how to change programming :).

Anyways, we should have some kind of meeting about this eventually (with people like Jonathan Edwards, Chris Granger, and probably many others). There is the LIVE workshop held yearly at SPLASH, the next one being in Boston at the end of October.

here is author's repo: https://github.com/Glench/Flowsheets-v2 this is very cool and intuitive interface. Hope that Glen will continue to develop!

I sometimes use Excel (a Swiss army knife..) to literally build scripts based on small pieces that I can test individually. Having a specific spreadsheet for it would be awesome!

While your comment could have been presented more kindly, I do appreciate that feedback and will try to polish future demos to make them more watchable.

This would make a fantastic powershell repl console.