First reply, be gentle.
I think the problem you're describing is one that results when an expert tries to teach / design something to beginners and they forget how to present the information in an approachable manner. Sure, with code it _seems_ like "duh of course you need to _know_ the libraries to use a visual editor!" but that goes against the basic concept of having a visual styled IDE.
I'm a UX / visual design guy very interested in learning to program, have been for several years. But it's just not approachable beyond stuff like CodeAcademy, as it quickly becomes a labyrinth of documentation, cryptic instructions, and unclear ways to approach building a worthwhile program.
I digress, as that's not my point. Point is, many visual editors, even Quartz Composer, fail on the same area; they aren't approachable beyond tinkering with the switches and buttons. UX isn't even a passing thought on these tools. I would love to participate in building one of these tools and learning X language in the process. Until a visual designer is involved, these tools will continue being relegated to tiny niches unless a visionary developer comes along (-and actually completes the thing, as was mentioned above about the LightTable Chris guy).
I'm not saying design is _the_ answer, but all the best tools have been co-created with a visual/ mechanical/ industrial/ designer of some kind.
This is spot on. In programming communities, design is frequently dismissed as an "implementation detail" or part of "making it look good" (i.e. marketing). This is a distinct and recurring cultural blind spot – more conceptually interesting programming tools than I can count have been torpedoed by a lack of attention to visual/UI/UX/HCI design.
Design is absolutely critical when it comes to helping people understand complex systems. Well-designed tools work with the human brain to mitigate cognitive load, allowing the user to focus on making stuff happen rather than on juggling handfuls of information. Few programming tools, experimental or mainstream, fit this description; even fewer have anything like it in mind.
Successful efforts to make programming less opaque and more accessible will necessarily involve massive leaps forward in design. I'm glad to see design beginning to make some inroads into programming culture, but we've got a long way to go yet considering how frequently the Unix CLI is still held up as the state of the art.
You do know there is a whole field called programming language design right? Not everyone in the PL field is doing theory or chasing better performance, some of us actually focus on design (and I'm not the only one, and design has been studied and practiced since at least the 70s). Visual design is where we are especially weak, but we have our PX down (like UX, but User becomes Programmer).
Yep, I'm aware. I'm still just a student, but I try to follow PX-related research pretty closely, and I'm actually something of a fan of your work in this space in particular :) I've also got a lot of respect for projects like Elm, where an explicit focus on programming-as-UX has produced a language and development environment that (although incomplete) are collectively more accessible and learnable than many of the existing alternatives.
That said, I'm still of the opinion that programmer culture at large is too quick to disregard design. I'd really like to see more programming tools for general use developed with an eye to design, and for more industry and hobbyist programmers to realize that the current baseline state of existence is not an absolute maximum but a local one. We've pushed plain text pretty far, but it seems obvious to me that there's much bigger wins to be had if we throw out some of the assumptions our culture tends to make.
My wife is a visual designer (on feature phones, weirdly enough), she isn't very helpful with my own programming experiments [1] :)
Actually, we need a visual designer who is also versed in programmer experience (rather than end-user experience) design, and I haven't found anybody like that yet. A UX designer is not some magical person who can magically do design in any domain; even HCI researchers are not a panacea [2]. Also, designs, even by seasoned designers well versed in the domain they are working in, are never perfect, there are always trade offs to be made.
Nothing is ever finished, we only get closer to our goals that are infinitely away.
I'm a UX / visual design guy very interested in learning to program, have been for several years. But it's just not approachable beyond stuff like CodeAcademy, as it quickly becomes a labyrinth of documentation, cryptic instructions, and unclear ways to approach building a worthwhile program.
I digress, as that's not my point. Point is, many visual editors, even Quartz Composer, fail on the same area; they aren't approachable beyond tinkering with the switches and buttons. UX isn't even a passing thought on these tools. I would love to participate in building one of these tools and learning X language in the process. Until a visual designer is involved, these tools will continue being relegated to tiny niches unless a visionary developer comes along (-and actually completes the thing, as was mentioned above about the LightTable Chris guy).
I'm not saying design is _the_ answer, but all the best tools have been co-created with a visual/ mechanical/ industrial/ designer of some kind.