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never did this, what's the "selling point" of this method? Thanks.

by ausjke 11y ago

sparkie 11y ago
The selling point is that you can present algorithms to non-programmers and they can actually follow them without knowing anything about programming. It seems the brain is better suited for understanding spatial visualizations than complex linguistic structures, which require more training to understand. Visualizations like flow charts can help even advanced programmers get an understanding of some unfamiliar code, because it's much easier to see the program flow spatially than to read a big block of code and produce that representation in your head (temporarily, only to forget it shortly after). The downside is that building visualizations is much slower than typing the set of instructions for it, as we do in code. This program seems to do things backwards (generate code from flowcharts), where what would be the most useful functionality would be to generate the flowcharts from code - thus enabling both the programmer to be productive and the non-programmer to not be scared.
kpil 11y ago
The selling point is that it looks good to non-professionals and people that should know better. There is a really small class of problems that it actually has some use. In reality, it makes easy problems easy, and everything else complicated or impossible. COBOL programmers had to use JSP since control flow in COBOL is ugly as hell, and because of a lack of good tools. I guess the same idea that spawned COBOL that drives this; Just about anyone that does not drool (that much) can actually build highly complicated systems. In COBOLs case, it turned out that it's really really hard to write good COBOL systems. Because it's really really hard to build systems in any language. I could go on about information theory and whatnot, but let's say that only a fool would do surgery with a butter knife.
leke 11y ago
I'm going to guess education.
ausjke 11y ago
I saw the MIT scratch(lego style) coding for kids, which is nice. Also in the early days we did draw flow diagrams like this IDE does before coding, and there is the PLC logic coding in the factories, and there are also nice programming tools for artists etc(e.g. processing), I am just honestly thinking where to fit this one. Will try it sometime.

never did this, what's the "selling point" of this method? Thanks.

by ausjke 11y ago

never did this, what's the "selling point" of this method? Thanks.

The selling point is that you can present algorithms to non-programmers and they can actually follow them without knowing anything about programming. It seems the brain is better suited for understanding spatial visualizations than complex linguistic structures, which require more training to understand. Visualizations like flow charts can help even advanced programmers get an understanding of some unfamiliar code, because it's much easier to see the program flow spatially than to read a big block of code and produce that representation in your head (temporarily, only to forget it shortly after). The downside is that building visualizations is much slower than typing the set of instructions for it, as we do in code. This program seems to do things backwards (generate code from flowcharts), where what would be the most useful functionality would be to generate the flowcharts from code - thus enabling both the programmer to be productive and the non-programmer to not be scared.

kpil 11y ago

The selling point is that it looks good to non-professionals and people that should know better. There is a really small class of problems that it actually has some use. In reality, it makes easy problems easy, and everything else complicated or impossible. COBOL programmers had to use JSP since control flow in COBOL is ugly as hell, and because of a lack of good tools. I guess the same idea that spawned COBOL that drives this; Just about anyone that does not drool (that much) can actually build highly complicated systems. In COBOLs case, it turned out that it's really really hard to write good COBOL systems. Because it's really really hard to build systems in any language. I could go on about information theory and whatnot, but let's say that only a fool would do surgery with a butter knife.

leke 11y ago

I'm going to guess education.

ausjke 11y ago

I saw the MIT scratch(lego style) coding for kids, which is nice. Also in the early days we did draw flow diagrams like this IDE does before coding, and there is the PLC logic coding in the factories, and there are also nice programming tools for artists etc(e.g. processing), I am just honestly thinking where to fit this one. Will try it sometime.