Hello,
I am interested in programming and I asked a question about potential use cases for block based programming within the Wikimedia projects in the last year on this Mailinglist. In the last months I tried different things to offer alternative ways of creating source code.
I like for example the programming language COBOL as it is possible to write source code with only a few brackets and it is quite similar to short English sentences. I have experience with the programming languages R and COBOL. Do you think it is possible to collect the most used code snippets and create blocks for these code snippets. I wrote a script in the programming language R that enables the conversion of blocks to code. https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/hogue/block-to-code/-/tree/main/ There are two folders and I am still experimenting and changes are possible to make it more useful for code generation. From my point of view it could enable more people to contribute to the Wikimedia Codebase if it is possible to create programs through combining blocks in a visual programming language like Snap! or Scratch. I also tried it the other way with converting source code to blocks in the visual programming language Snap! and wrote a script to convert Spreadsheet functions to source code in Programming language R. Do you think the possibility to use of visual programming languages could enable more people to contribute to the Wikimedia Codebase. I am interested in extending the existing script to help people to contribute in such a way. Another advantage is the possibility to translate the blocks. This makes it possible to understand to contribute also without an understanding of English.
Please tell me what you think about my thoughts and if and how I could do it from your point of view.
Hogü-456