@inthehands I have enjoyed this thread so much... thank you.
I'm less convinced that there's a clear separation between thinking and typing. The history of programming language design is all about that: how do you create an expressive medium for people to *think with* in a particular domain. It's not just making it more like English. People who have the right language in their hands can do really amazing things.
To stay with the example, HyperTalk was really good because it was *so* fit-to-purpose. It didn't do anything but manipulate this tiny object model. Alan Kay bitched about it: that the smallness of the object model itself was the problem... but you and I and everyone who loved HyperCard felt differently.