Michael,

>>   I'm very wondered, that industry have not been thinking about
>> non-programmers: i meet only one mention of this topic - in 
>> publication of 1974: E.F. Codd and C.J. Date, "Interactive 
>> Support for Nonprogrammers: The Relational and Network Approaches".
>> They wrote (in 1974 !), that role of "random" users was 
>> increasing greatly, and really these users soon would present 
>> majority, 
MK> Actually the designers of COBOL thought the same in the 1950s: COBOL was
MK> intended to be written by business people, not by programmers.

Aim is reached in SQL's Insert/Update/Select/Delete.

P.S. Recursion was necessary, and PL/SQL tried and failed -
user sinks in procedurel cycles.
But on slides 41-49, 64 (of http://sql50.euro.ru/sql5.11.1.ppt )
aim have reached. I'm listening your objections.

MK> The notion
MK> that non-programmers should be able to write programs, while inherently
MK> self-contradictory

Many centuries ago, literacy was also very seldom event.
And dictators said, that simple man have to be not capable to write.
But now all are literate (you have mentality of dictator).
Yes, simplification of alphabet and some other reforms was necessary.

MK> has been a goal for computer science ever since
MK> computers were invented. The technology that came closest to success in this
MK> was probably the spreadsheet (Visicalc).

You are supposing '=A1+B2' in cell ?
There is nothing else, what can be considered as writing program.

MK> There are millions of
MK> non-programmers, or at any rate self-taught programmers, writing code (often
MK> rather bad code) in a wide variety of languages including Javascript, XSLT,
MK> SQL, XPath and lots more.

I'm agreed about SQL and XPath;
agreed partially about XSL (non-programmers avoid it as bulky),
strongly disagree about JS.

MK> But as far as database query is concerned, ad-hoc end users do not write
MK> code

It is very strange, that they generally had studied to write, isn't right ?

MK> they use simple form-filling interfaces, notably the
MK> single-search-term Google query.

You are messing up satisfaction of own needs by own efforts
(creating code for own purpose) and got possilitity to use
other's tools, which are not necessary, but simply seductive
and convenient (usage of Google).



Dmitry Turin
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