When I was a young programmer, I thought that anyone could be taught to program given patience and desire to learn. Over time, (with enough time spent helping to hire good programmers) I came to believe that the ability to program was rarer than I could have ever imagined.

A couple of years ago, I came to a different conclusion. Programming and writing have a lot in common. Most people can't write a novel, a sonnet, or a play. But almost everyone can write a grocery list or a quick note to a friend.

Your talk of writing an infrastructure to allow non-programmers to customize the tools resonates nicely with this observation. People don't necessarily want to build new applications, they just want the applications they use to fit them better.

It also fits very well with the Maker movement that I've been following in another part of life.