Hot take, some visual programming systems need to be less understandable than their textual counterparts. Because esoterica and magic and memes https://twitter.com/maxbittker/status/1354665200939659265?s=19

These are great. Going to add them to my list.

that's a great list @Ivan Reese , my bookmarking habits have evolved similarly where literally any "system or environment" with programming-y/complex interactions belong

I love MaxBitter's side projects, can't wait until this ships

I have these two people on my shoulder. One says visual programming should be so intuitive, you don't even need documentation. You just point someone to it and beyond a few commands, they just get it and can use it. The other is what you say, it should be esoteric (but not intentionally obtuse) in such a way to drop one's guard and as an invitation to play.

@Max Krieger Why do you think that is, I mean, that less understandable is a benefit? One thing I can come up with is that if you're profoundly confused it'll take you into a state of beginner's mind almost automatically, which probably removes some barriers and encourages an open attitude towards learning something new. Whereas something that looks familiar leads you down all kinds of paths that are "obvious" at first sight, but then they aren't, at least not completely, and you end up in this entangled mess of some bits working as you expected and others not at all. Your knowledge gets in the way and nowhere in the process have you been encouraged to open up to something different.

@Stefan

One thing I can come up with is that if you're profoundly confused it'll take you into a state of beginner's mind almost automatically, which probably removes some barriers and encourages an open attitude towards learning something new.

This is my feeling also and is also what I was trying to get at with:

it should be esoteric (but not intentionally obtuse) in such a way to drop one's guard and as an invitation to play.

I think it's a challenging idea to think about what encourages exploration and play more. Is it the right-approach to completely remove any barrier such that any idea is ready deducted from the environment? Or is the right-approach to actually intentionally add in barriers such that they must be broken by the user or that the environment provides an almost plinko like experience?

@Stefan honestly it was mostly an intuitive feeling. I agree with your and @bmitc's idea that it erases preconceptions for experienced programmers. I also suspect that, similar to how video games challenged UI design, that injecting more fantasy, lore, atmosphere, rule-breaking into the space gives surprising results. VPLs are an opportunity to depart from the platonic grid of text, yet almost immediately we've adopted a set of idioms and norms for this domain as well 🥱

reminds me of some of the original t2tuesday simulation videos, which i unfortunately can’t find

ORCA is the only other "esoteric VPL" system I can think of right now. would be interested in others

Depending on how you define esoteric and VPL, there are definitely others. Ones that come to mind are Mock Mechanics by @Felipe Reigosa, Baba is You (technically a game but also a turing complete programming language that can make other games), AsciiDots (https://esolangs.org/wiki/AsciiDots), and even MFM by @Dave Ackley, even if ULAM is text. There are other and older examples, especially in game creation and education spaces (KidSim, PuzzleScript, TileCode (https://microsoft.github.io/tilecode/), ToonTalk)

right, not all interesting programming systems are necessarily turing complete, but it is a decent heuristic to find under-recognized programmable interfaces