There will always be users who get frustrated at complexity and there will always be people who want their clothes hand tailored.

User programming, however, I see as just a way to convert gestures into functionality. The fact that one program’s gesture looks like another program’s code is distinct from the value of giving users the ability to direct the functionality to their own end.

However, there is great value in designing gestures that are simple and easy for large numbers of users. While the relative/absolute references in Excel are subtle (and annoying when you get something other than you expected), the ability to even compute a sum over a range of cells so simply is amazing, try doing that in Word! =)

So, I guess my point is that user programmability is good when it is simple yet powerful, largely because any user gesture that is both simple and powerful is good.

When I think more about it, I feel that there are some users who do not like to play around with the software, they see it as a solution, that will work. They do not like to spend efforts on learning to program. In such cases user programming might not work.