David Weinberger has flat feet: Programming

Check this post The flatfooted learning society from Joho the Blog:

But, I am a flatfooted “programmer” and always will be. I have limitations that would have kept me from ever becoming a professional. I have an odd inability to handle indirect relationships, e.g., pointers; I did fine with C, but bombed at C++. I have problems with recursion, so although I once did a fair bit of hobbyist Lisp “programming” (I once wrote a beginner’s guide to Lisp as a document extension language), I can’t handle the self-reflexive capabilities that turn Lisp into a super-tool for Paul Graham. I’m terrible at math. I simply could not have become a pro. (from:The flatfooted learning society)

David Weiner, author, speaker, thinker, turns out to be a programmer too! Read his musings of what it's like being a flatfooted programmer.

But the reason I really cite this is because it reminds me of Google's new tool to easily create applications for Android. It's called AppInventor. I've studied it a little. It looks interesting and cool but it raises in me an old bias against visual programming environments.

Take a look at this out of context screen shot. I wonder whether you can really program visually. I think it was Dave Winer who said years ago that programming is more like writing and less like drawing. I think I agree.

I wonder what the flat footed developer corps thinks. Does Visual Programming help?