Great talk by Mel Conway touching on tangible and live software:

if you're interested in that, here's the paper he wrote about them: http://melconway.com/Home/pdf/simplify.pdf

Thanks! Lot of good stuff in there that resonates well with me:

The input-process-output application-building model must be replaced by a transform-in-place model. Instead of source and object files we should be thinking in terms of modifying the working material in stages.

“starting”a program is alien to the transform-in-place model

the developer must be able to build interactively any application whose components can be anywhere on the network and that is represented in its entirety on the user interface of a tool that conforms to all the hands-on design principles.

His Hands-On chart is quite accurate, and very useful for designers of software for beginners. His box and wire user interface for the programming is very similar to what Luna is doing, although Luna is trying to be able to switch back and forth between a syntax view and a node-and-wire view, which is an additional challenge that many of us are skeptical can be achieved before they use up all their capital. I can't imagine how many man-years Conway put into his program builder. Unfortunately his system hits a brick wall where there is a magical message block that handles the user input. It is a simple fact that manipulating graphical objects takes a fair amount of code and that responding to a range of gestures, while taking into account the time periods of those gestures, is a challenging task, and is not easily represented in some graphical way.

Luna is trying to be able to switch back and forth between a syntax view and a node-and-wire view, which is an additional challenge that many of us are skeptical can be achieved before they use up all their capital

As someone who works on a similar system with bi-modal editing (Sketch-n-Sketch) I’ll say it’s very doable. It’s one of those problems that you initially think is hard but actually isn’t that bad once you sit down to solve it.