RiSE WP7 App TouchStudio: Programming by Touch

I hope its NOT the prototype of future Visual Studio ...

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nikolait/archive/2011/04/09/announcing-touchstudio.aspx
http://research.microsoft.com/TouchStudio

The way in which we interact with computing devices is changing: instead of keyboards, advanced touchscreens become more common; mobile devices are often equipped with more sensors, such as location information and acceleration, and are always connected to the cloud.

TouchStudio is a new programming environment and language built around this new reality. Its typed, structured programming language is built around the idea of only using a touchscreen as the input device to author code. It has built-in primitives which make it easy to access the rich sensor data available on a mobile device. In our vision, the state of the program is automatically distributed between mobile clients and the cloud, with automatic synchronization of data and execution between clients and cloud, liberating the programmer from worrying (or even having to know) about the details.

The first beta version of TouchStudio, now available on the Windows Phone 7 marketplace, already realizes a large portion of our vision.

its actually pretty cool homebrew it aints.. but still you can do some interesting stuff

I wonder how much of this came out of Popfly. It's a shame Popfly got canned, because the moment I saw it I thought "I want to see someone do this on a Surface."

Not sure about the usability of the phone form factor for this, but it could lead to an interesting tool for making aggregation type gadgets, like Popfly was.

Looks like a painful way to code. I guess it's useful if really want to code while you are on line at the DMV and don't have a netbook handy.

@felix9: It's too much work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826100006

I would prefer something like this as the IDE peripheral where I can simply think the logic of the app and have it materialize into compilable source code. Preferably write once run everywhere cross platform Java code.

Inspired by:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nth_Degree_%28TNG_episode%29

"Barclay finds the Enterprise computer too slow to keep with it. He goes to the holodeck and creates a device that allows him to interact directly with the Enterprise and array computer systems, putting an end to the Array's failures. The crew finds that Barclay has become too integrated with the computer, and when they try to shut down the computer, Barclay sends the ship into a "subspace inversion", jumping the ship across a great distance faster than warp travel."

@felix9: this is really cool! they put some thought into what could make a language/env fit for mobile. though it seems a ways away from being actually useful, but will definitely be following this ...

Personally, I think this highlights one of the problems with Microsoft: they know that everyone is doing this cool and groovy touchy thing, so surely it makes sense to apply it everywhere.

It looks like an IDE with an tedious way of inputting programs. Is it aimed at consumers (do they really want to learn to write sequential programs) or is it aimed at programmers (who can probably type the statements just as quickly and will be annoyed by the limitations)?

I get that typing stuff on a phone is hard (which is why no one would probably want to do this anywhere), but then perhaps we're looking at a solution that doesn't really have a problem?

Can I share what's created in my TouchStudio with someone else [who also has TS on their WP7]?

This isn't really a new idea.  Pretty much exactly the same thing was in a bunch of Apple applications almost 20 years ago, and I expect PARC probably had it before then.

There are places where this type of thing is well suited (I almost built something like it into an application recently -- still might), but it is hardly a general programming paradigm.  It tends to work best on simple programs and/or for users with no programming experience.  If you absolutely have to program "on" a mobile device, it's probably about as good as anything.  It will never replace VS.

34 minutes ago, ryanb wrote

 It will never replace VS. 

I don't think it was intended to. I consider it to be more like a touch-based PowerShell for WP7.

I tried it, but, it is quite conconfusing as I don't know what kind of control template they are using. It is like, why show me songs, but, how are they displayed, only their way. It is better just define my own control template and data template myself. I do hope VS lets me apply templates like it does in Expression.