"How do we get people to understand programming? We change programming. We turn it into something that's understandable by people." – Bret Victor, UX guru from Apple, etc. Anyone can start writing with a word processor, or draw something with a drawing program. Why should only engineers be able to create software? Why is programming still synonymous with writing code in a text window, 70 years after the birth of the digital computer? What would be possible if designers, economists, artists, and others could create software themselves?

1. Programmering
für alle!
für alle!
Weld.io @ SSWC 2013@tomsoderlund
#programmeringfuralle

2. Varför kan inte alla
skapa mjukvara?

6. Bret Victor worrydream.com

10. Creator UserUX designer Programmer

11. – Dan Ingalls (co-creator of Smalltalk), Xerox PARC
“If a system is to serve
the creative spirit, it must
be entirely
comprehensible to a
single individual.”

12. Summary
•Great ideas get lost in their translation to
code. Creators should not have to think
like computers.
•Ideas also get lost when transferred
between people. There is value in having
a single person being able to create an
application.

13. Visual
Programming

14. Behavior without Code
• Smart components
• Linked parameters
• Fill-in-the-blanks templates
• Step-by-step recording (macros)
• Pipes
• Natural language input (computerized or human
translation)
• other?

15. Smalltalk

16. Etoys

17. Scratch and Hopscotch

18. Visual Basic and Flash

19. Yahoo Pipes

20. Lego NXT-G

21. App Builders

22. Caspio

23. Appery.io and Codiqa

24. Fliplet and OpenRatio

25. My ideas (Weld.io)

26. Who would want this?
•Designers (UX, graphics) and artists
•Business people (finance, accounting,
etc)
•Expert system builders
•other?

27. Design Principles
•Visual & tangible: see & feel what you
create.
•Rapid: design, develop, test -
simultaneously
•Collaborative: design, develop, test -
together
•Friendly: zero startup time, don’t
crash/hang, error informative messages.

28. So, what does that mean?
•Drag-and-drop UI builder.
•Smart components, linked parameters.
•Develop on your target platform.
•Always online, always running.
•Never crash, friendly errors.
•Web as core platform, export to native
apps.

30. Thank you!
•Sign up for newsletter:
http://weld.io/sswc/
•People/co-founders needed (tech,
design)!
•Contact: tom@tomsoderlund.com,
@tomsoderlund

31. Simplifying the problem
•Narrowing the target group.
•Encapsulating functionality in smart
components.