Drawing code: Bret Victor's visualization dreams

Drawing Dynamic Visualizations from Bret Victor on Vimeo.

If you haven't watched the video above, do yourself a favor. As a journalist and designer who has a hard time when forced to code something, a tool like the one showcased in it would be a dream come true. I think in words and pictures, and I like to design with words and pictures as well, by manipulating* them, by dragging, dropping, moving, and scaling them, rather than by defining their features through obscure programming languages, which feel unnatural. At the same time, I acknowledge that learning to code is liberating (it is appropriate to mention Douglas Rushkoff's famous book here), so I would like to find a way to reconcile what I feel with what I need. Bret Victor defines himself as a "purveyor of impossible dreams" in his website, by the way. I really hope that this label will be proved inaccurate.

*The verb to manipulate comes in part from manus, which means hand in Latin. Read more.