
Allcancode: from a coding game to a tool that simplifies software production - voxelperfect
https://medium.com/@voxelperfect/allcancode-from-a-coding-game-to-a-tool-that-simplifies-software-production-e2459ff5f0cd
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8bitsrule
There once was a tool that simplifies software production built into nearly
all 8-bit machines. It was called BASIC.

Millions of kids learned how (and how not) to code using it. Many of them
gained a career as a result.

Unfortunately kids in the future had to do without it. Because there were a
-thousand- 'better ideas'.

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voxelperfect
You are absolutely right! I used to be one of those kids that learned machine
code and BASIC while still in primary school. But technology evolves and
expectations grow. That is why we need better tools all the time.

~~~
8bitsrule
Hypercard was a better tool. And then they took -that- away.

The fundamentals of coding don't change. Built-in BASIC was -so- easy to use.
Which 'better tools' can say that?

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voxelperfect
This is a blog post telling the story of Allcancode that started with a coding
game featured in code.org and played by millions of kids around the world and
then transformed to a tool provider that streamlines software development.

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z3t4
it apears they have not entered the market nor created a prototype yet though.
maybe the next pivot will be a platform where designers can find developers.
youre very lucky as a dev to find a good designer and vice versa.

~~~
voxelperfect
We will start with a private beta in about a month. The tool is already in use
in-house to deliver real projects.

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otakucode
Did you build your tool with your tool? That's really the only question that
matters as far as I see it. If not, why not?

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mcphage
> That's really the only question that matters as far as I see it.

Why do you feel this question matters at all, let alone be the only question
that matters?

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otakucode
If it is being proposed as a new way of doing general software development,
yet it could not create the system itself, then it has clear and profound
limitations. Most markedly in the case of visual programming paradigms, it
means they haven't solved the problems that have tripped up visual programming
all along - what happens when things get complex?

The approach of encapsulating things to present bundles of code as a black box
is a good one, but it needs to be paired with a powerful navigation interface
that allows flying down into those black boxes pretty instantly, and figuring
out how you can be viewing the internals of those alongside the 'outer' code
at the same time to understand how things are interacting when things go
wrong.

~~~
mcphage
> If it is being proposed as a new way of doing general software development

Which it isn’t. It’s being proposed as a tool for rapid application
development.

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mar77i
I wonder whether there is a Go4-like approach to control Marco, you know, that
kind of PatternPattern that makes your code hard to read.

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voxelperfect
There are many things that could be done with Marco as experiments. Companies
cannot survive on experiments, though :-) so we had to move on.

