Most people interested in developing new programming languages or programming environments are looking at how to improve the syntax and semantics of the program text or at tools that help make programmers more productive at crafting the program text. What we need is a more fundamental change to the conception of what a program is. This paper introduces a new, semiotic programming environment in which we program with signs in a context, rather than with symbols in a text file and where we treat dialogue rather than functions as the dominant organising principle of our code. All of the information held in this environment is managed in a distributed, semiotic graph that is organized into multiple ontological spaces. Taken together these enable our programs and data to have greater semantic depth. Finally the paper gives a brief introduction to ‘Semprola’, a Semiotic Programming Language that can be used in this semiotic programming environment. The workshop will involve a short demo of the developing implementation of Semprola