Data Programming for Non-Programmers

"Big Data" is becoming a standard catch phrase that often means more like "Ubiquitous Data" - it's not necessarily all that big, but it's everywhere, and its collection rate is accelerating. Citizens may only have a need to spend a few hours per week attempting to make sense of that data. The concomitant worry is that citizens will be left behind as the IT priesthood leverages that data to run our world. But the skills to program in conventional languages are not universal; so, what to do? We are creating a visual programming environment for user-programmers (who are not trained programmers). Because of the sporadic usage pattern of such users, traditional languages and code structuring approaches are both overkill and difficult to learn. Therefore, the environment is designed to support very fluid relationships among code chunks, in terms of their relationship and evolution, as well as very fluid interactions among code chunks when processing data. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.