The Hidden Program State Hurts Everyone

Abstract

While visual scaffolding, live programming, and direct manipulation of the program state are considered useful programming paradigms for novices, they might not always offer the same benefits to experienced software developers. In this essay, we will use chess as a proxy for exploring how these paradigms can also support those who have an intuitive understanding of the program state and its connection with textual code. We will consider the visual programming language Algot and recent user studies conducted on the language to uncover insights into how direct manipulation and programming by demonstration can benefit everyone.