This podcast is absolutely bizarre:

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/037.html

It's basically a bunch of nerd hating self-loathing that's based on just incorrect premises and information like this (img). WTF are you talking about. There are *totally* professional "spreadsheeters".

The first problem with most of his research is he has absolutely no studies to back his main premise: Coding was created by and designed for people with autism.

Without some *serious* research analysis of the prevalence of spectrum disorders in CS the whole premise is bunk.

Keep in mind that there's still a vast majority of people who have no idea that other people can do things like:

* Talk inside their mind with an internal dialogue.
* Visualize an orange in their mind's eye and rotate it.

Which brings me to another problem:

The way he talks it's like he thinks a bunch of people on the spectrum got together and planned to ruin programming for the rest of the world in some meeting on 1 Jan 1970, but none of these people even knew there was a thing called "autism spectrum disorder", so how could they?

That makes the accusatory attitude of his research really obnoxious. He could just say he wants to research the usability of programming languages and be done with it, but instead he has to propaganda to sell his research, which immediately invalidates his research.

The propaganda tactic being used here is "Us vs. Them". He could just say "We should research why programming is hard and make it easier." The propaganda is when he says "We have been humiliated by nerds for YEARS! It's time we rise up and take them down...with my research."

This abusive appeal to the public, crafting of an imaginary nefarious enemy, all point at an attempt to appeal to the public before acceptance from the scientific community. Public appeals by scientists like this are considered a sign of bad science.

The other problem is he's picking an obviously easily defensible position, and then attaching an almost universally indefensible position to it.

Obviously programming sucks, and a lot of that is from how we all designed it.

It's indefensible to blame "nerds".

I predict he'll use a Motte-and-Bailey tactic in that case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

He'll make his wild claims about nefarious nerds ruining code, and when pressed, retreat to the easily defensible position of "All I'm saying is programming is harder than necessary."

Ultimately, the research might be alright--I'd have to review a couple papers--but if it's being promoted with a classic propaganda tactic of inventing an Us-vs-Them fantasy and using a Motte-and-Bailey fallacy I'm going to be *highly* suspect of it. I predict the following: