FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

> I'm envisioning a way to create software, where while having a conversation with another person, we could collaboratively draw some shapes on the screen, connect them, then my program comes to life, evolves, scales up, scales down, etc. I believe programming should not be an endeavor accessible only to those adept at manipulating text files.

There are many solutions (e.g. Simulink, GUI builders, the "connected nodes" approach of Blender) for that, but they only tackle specific areas. I don't see that changing, either. And they usually don't address anything except very small programs (say I find it very strange that programmers seem to think their trade has artificial entry barriers. For some reason, mathematicians are not concerned with that. It's already fairly easy to get started with programming. Languages have come a long way, there are good IDEs and you can get started using just freely available software.

Completely agree with your first paragraph, but not the second.

There have been plenty of GUI programming tools, but most of them are pretty crap (the ones I have tried). MS Access had an OK query builder, but at the end of the day it didn't gain you anything over SQL. Java beans were touted as t a hot topic back when I was at university, but nothing ever came of them.

Syntax is rarely the difficult part in programming (except with CSS maybe). The way I see it, plugging parts as you describe together relies on a number of assumptions being made for you. The easier it is to plug things together, the less flexible each unit becomes. The difficult bit is choosing what assumptions are appropriate.

This presentation might help a bit: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KQkRJOiEBDktgFSa3qle...

There is so much stuff in the source tree - including what looks like a complete UI layer - that I'm having a hard time grokking it from that direction.

Phrases like "can be used to generate code for any language or platform" and "FOAM is “written in itself”" make me want to understand what's going on first and how it solves whatever problems it sets out to solve rather than trashing it out of hand based on initial aesthetic impressions.

Curiouser: https://github.com/foam-framework/foam/blob/b75af78303f15826...

On the demos page

http://foam-framework.github.io/foam/foam/demos/DemoCat.html

All the links to "Source" take me to GitHub 404.

I would suggest this is the most important part of showcasing a new project.