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I just think it's unlikely outside of domain specific problems. For example, flow charts and state machine diagrams can elegantly describe some algorithms but t

I just think it's unlikely outside of domain specific problems. For example, flow charts and state machine diagrams can elegantly describe some algorithms but they have limited power which limits the complexity of the diagrams. If you want a visual language with programming features like function calls, state, threads, recursion etc. it's going to end up being of comparable complexity to just writing it in code in my opinion. Even visualising how a relative simple algorithm like quicksort works in an intuitive way is challenging let alone a fully working application. Happy to see examples that go against this though.

TuringTest 11y ago
Visual languages are not good for representing complex state, but they're great for representing complex data transformations - often much better than textual languages. If you want to transform the structure of an input file (or any stream) with a hierarchical structure to an exit file with a different structure, in a text language you need to build a parser following the data's grammar, and create a state machine that represents the required transformations, which is not an easy task. With a flow language, you just draw an input component for each level of the hierarchy and list the data fields supported by that component; and then do the same for the output structure. The task is typically much simpler, as long as the task is pure data transformation and you don't need any side-effects during its execution.
- seanwilson 11y ago
  > and you don't need any side-effects during its execution. Have you seen any visualisations for pure functional programs? So they wouldn't have any state/side-effects but I can't imagine how you'd visualise those usefully unless you only used small concrete example inputs and showed the function being evaluated. It is very interesting how some types of algorithms can be visualised easily and others cannot.

TuringTest 11y ago

Visual languages are not good for representing complex state, but they're great for representing complex data transformations - often much better than textual languages. If you want to transform the structure of an input file (or any stream) with a hierarchical structure to an exit file with a different structure, in a text language you need to build a parser following the data's grammar, and create a state machine that represents the required transformations, which is not an easy task. With a flow language, you just draw an input component for each level of the hierarchy and list the data fields supported by that component; and then do the same for the output structure. The task is typically much simpler, as long as the task is pure data transformation and you don't need any side-effects during its execution.

seanwilson 11y ago
> and you don't need any side-effects during its execution. Have you seen any visualisations for pure functional programs? So they wouldn't have any state/side-effects but I can't imagine how you'd visualise those usefully unless you only used small concrete example inputs and showed the function being evaluated. It is very interesting how some types of algorithms can be visualised easily and others cannot.