The problem with programming and how to fix it
&gt; What reason is there to believe we can improve programming technology to be vastly easier and more accessible? To start with, spreadsheets.<p>So many failed efforts to make programming vastly easier and more accessible have started with almost this exact line.<p>I think it&#x27;s possible that there is a seductive trap there. We see spreadsheets and we think, “programming that doesn&#x27;t have the downsides we associate with spreadsheets could be just as accessible”. But maybe the problems are intimately tied to what makes it accessible, and wheb you try to make programming that accessible you either fail or end up with something that doesn&#x27;t offer any advantage over the spreadsheets we have.<p>&gt; Unfortunately application programming got trampled in the internet gold rush.<p>No, it didn&#x27;t. Oh, sure, it&#x27;s not getting chased around by venture capital, but there&#x27;s plenty of it going on.<p>&gt; As a result the internet age has seen an exponential increase in the complexity of programming, as well as its exclusivity.<p>It really hasn&#x27;t; we may often be solving far more complex problems, but we do it with languages,  frameworks, and platforms that allow casual programmers to do so more easily than at any time in the past. Programming is “more exclusive” only in that:<p>(1) in working environments, IT policies restrict programming (other than spreadsheets) to the high priesthood more completely than ever before, and<p>(2) lots of simple problems that would be solved by casual programming in the past now have end-user tools that allow them to be solved without anything we recognize as programming.