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are there any interesting new(ish) very-high-level "easy" programming languages that simplify generic application development for non-developers? i.e. what people would use now (aside from excel) to make their own apps/tools if LLMs hadn't happened
@mntmn non-developers become developers when they code though? I find this line a bit to fuzzy to make a recommendation. If you look back at what "non-developers" did with VB6 it was impressive. I think we lost that with the web. It doesn't have to be Basic but it's been there since early personal computing and it's not ideal but its approachable.
@cararemixed yes, i agree, and trying to think of ways to very gently introduce programming syntax in something that i.e. just text/images first. for example, if you just write the word "hello" and run it, it would just show that word in the middle of the screen. and then you can gradually add stuff to refine it. html kind of works like that, it just has not-good-looking defaults and too much boilerplate. i guess that's why we ended up with markdown. but markdown lacks interactivity and forms.
@mntmn The right bit of extensions around HTML could do some of this. Avoiding JavaScript would probably be required as it'd be a very leaky abstraction. HTMX style decorations could go some distance. Maybe wrap it around CouchDB so apps can be served, data held locally, and application installed as replicated data. I personally feel like the web has great ideas but the temptation to break out of a restricted subset ends up ruining most of these.
@cararemixed yeah, i mean with normal HTML i think it already loses at <!DOCTYPE html> and <meta charset="UTF-8">. that's just an example of bizarre things we take for granted but that don't need to be there
@cararemixed i remember learning C as a kid and i was bewildered about having to write #include <stdio.h> and having no idea what that meant or how to memorize it