This smells a lot like "Script X" - a 90's era collaboration between IBM and Apple, but for end-users.

Back in the early-mid 90’s Apple Computer and IBM and I seem to remember some other tech nonsense peddlers formed a joint venture (I'm not looking this up, all from memory), with a name something like Talagent, forgettable.

But their product was supposedly this uber-duper new non-language that was going to completely take over software development. Named “Script-X” it starts with each programmer defining the language they want to use, the syntax and whatnot of the language itself, and then they work in blissful joy writing code in the style they prefer to write code.

I cannot believe they actually managed to create a joint venture, mount a huge industry PR campaign, and start selling this utter shite without thinking this pure idiocy through…

No two programmers working on the same project could read one another’s code. The developers spent a large amount of time changing their minds’ on the specifics of the “optimal language they wanted”, which caused previous work to be incompatible to the language and that programmer who chose to change their programming mental model. Not a single project using their Script-X shipped, it was a total and complete failure.

I was at Philips Media while this was taking place, and being a little software language author myself, I watched this playout with dismay these participants could be so short sighted.