Does turtle graphics have the wrong associations?

[Terry Reedy]

Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
>>> My proposed no-syntax
>>> IDE *also* gets rid of the need to bother with any programming-language
>>> syntax. I've been proposing it for years, but nobody has shown any
>>> interest

What you describe below is similar to various systems that have been 
proposed and even implemented, including visual programming systems. And 
there has been some success with non-programmers. But for most people, 
it is simply easier to say/write what one means rather than point and 
click. Point-and-click writing reminds me of point-and-click speaking. 
Great for those who need it but a hindrance to those who do not.

This is not to say that traditional editors cannot be improved with 
better backup memory aids. Indeed, even IDLE recognizes function names 
and pops up a bar listing parameters.

Feel free to develop a Visual Python environment. I might even give it a 
try.

>> From: Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au>
>> I'm interested. No-syntax IDE? How is this even possible?
> 
> I guess you missed what I previously posted.

I did too and had the same question.

> The basic idea is that
> you start with test data, and you use menus to select appropriate
> data-processing actions to perform on that data. For example, you
> manually key in a file name containing test data, or copy and paste
> that same file name. Then you select "open file by that name" or
> "load all lines from file by that name" etc. from a menu. If you
> just opened the file, you now have a stream of input, and you can
> select to read one line or one s-expression or one character etc.
> from that file. After loading the whole file or one unit of data,
> you now have some *real* data to work from. For example, with a
> line of input, you might break it into words.

Processing a single data file is a common programming task, but not the 
only general category. A specialized Visual Data Analysis with Python 
might be a better and more focused project.

When I was doing statistical data analysis on a daily basis for a 
living, I would have loved to have had a system that would read in the 
first line and let me define (and name) the fields by point and click.
(I usually worked with fixed-width, column-delimited fields.)
Instead, I had to write a format statement and some summary analysis 
code, run it, look at it for sanity, and decide if my format had been 
correct.

Terry Jan Reedy