On the contrary, I want programming to be easier where possible, but the goals of this manifesto (and all the similar ones before it) are trying to fix the wrong thing. Better and more powerful abstractions are always good, I'll always welcome a new tool that makes my job easier. However the goal of this project is to make a tool that's explicitly designed to make code that's easier to read for the average person, not easier to program in. This is in many ways a set of opposing goals. Things that are easier to understand tend to lead to more verbose code and vice versa. Look for instance at assembler. Conceptually assembler is
very simple
but because of that simplicity implementing anything non-trivial in assembly tends to be very verbose. On the other extreme languages like APL and Haskell are
very concise
but they're hard to understand because they're very complex and leverage a lot of very powerful concepts.
What I want are new tools that leverage powerful concepts to allow me to efficiently express complex ideas. These tools by their very nature are hard for the non-programmer to understand. Look at what's being proposed in this manifesto. They're advocating for what is in essence internet enabled Excel. Do we really want to start trying to write applications in Excel? Can you imagine the horrible spaghetti code that would result in? Imagine how much code you're going to have to write to express even mildly complicated concepts? Imagine trying to maintain one of these beasts.
Further more, for this idea they propose to get off the ground, the vast majority of programs would need to be written in this new language they're proposing, which is, quite frankly, not going to happen anytime in the next 20 years at least. We're still using C and assembly, and they don't look to be going anywhere anytime soon (although maybe Rust can dislodge a little of the C). I do think it would be good for more of the population to at least have a passing understanding of basic programming concepts, at the very least learning how to solve problems using abstract thinking would be useful, but I don't think trying to create some kind of "simple" programming language is the way to do it. There are "simple" programming languages out there, just look at any of the toy languages designed to teach children how to program. But that's the thing, they'll always just be toys, they expose a very limited subset of capabilities for solving a limited subset of problems (mostly they focus on making it easy to draw on the screen since it allows for simple games that provide positive feedback for children learning).
What I want are new tools that leverage powerful concepts to allow me to efficiently express complex ideas. These tools by their very nature are hard for the non-programmer to understand. Look at what's being proposed in this manifesto. They're advocating for what is in essence internet enabled Excel. Do we really want to start trying to write applications in Excel? Can you imagine the horrible spaghetti code that would result in? Imagine how much code you're going to have to write to express even mildly complicated concepts? Imagine trying to maintain one of these beasts.
Further more, for this idea they propose to get off the ground, the vast majority of programs would need to be written in this new language they're proposing, which is, quite frankly, not going to happen anytime in the next 20 years at least. We're still using C and assembly, and they don't look to be going anywhere anytime soon (although maybe Rust can dislodge a little of the C). I do think it would be good for more of the population to at least have a passing understanding of basic programming concepts, at the very least learning how to solve problems using abstract thinking would be useful, but I don't think trying to create some kind of "simple" programming language is the way to do it. There are "simple" programming languages out there, just look at any of the toy languages designed to teach children how to program. But that's the thing, they'll always just be toys, they expose a very limited subset of capabilities for solving a limited subset of problems (mostly they focus on making it easy to draw on the screen since it allows for simple games that provide positive feedback for children learning).