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The tone of the article sounds preemptively dismissive of the visual programming paradigm itself using deficiencies of its implementations. This is like saying

The tone of the article sounds preemptively dismissive of the visual programming paradigm itself using deficiencies of its implementations. This is like saying OOP is deficient because a language implements it in a bad way. As with text-based programming, visual tooling varies in quality. Several existing visual tools address the issues the author raises (diff support, searching, modularity etc.). Further, saying that visual tools are not Googleable or have enough following on StackOverflow is a Catch-22 situation. It won't improve until people start using and improving the tooling. The same applies for other points the author makes. For example, I would argue the lack of open-source visual programming tools is more due to the lack of adoption stemming from FUD than it is from lack of interest in the paradigm itself. Generalizing what is essentially the state of infrastructure to an entire paradigm (visual logic authoring) doesn't convey the full picture.

snowwindwaves 11y ago
can you provide some links for visual diffing tools? 90% of the programs I write are PLC programs in the IEC 61131 function block language. I would love to be able to diff and merge. PLC processors have come down so much in cost we have gone to a modular architecture where we have multiple CPUs in a plant each running an independent machine or part of the plant process partly so that one programmer can work on the program for 1 CPU without having to merge another programmer's changes. I thought this could be useful if I could use the PLC programming software (Schneider Unity) to export PDFs of the function block diagrams: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/improving-open-source-hardware-visual-diffs/ http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/improving-open-source-h... I thought I might be able to get this open source PLC programming software which includes a function block renderer to read the unity XML program exports and then I could render the function block sections myself and diff them: http://www.beremiz.org/doc http://www.beremiz.org/doc Here is the only real product I've ever seen which has a module for matlab simulink diffing: https://www.diffplug.com/ https://www.diffplug.com/ Schneider does have the UnityDiff tool which has come a long way in the last couple years and it does pretty decent diffs but there is no way to generate them automatically that I know of. I have to open both versions of the program I want to diff and then run the diffing tool. Then the visual diff output can't be exported out of the unitydiff program. printing doesn't work. I should make some feature requests.
- Serow225 11y ago
  Simulink comes with a built-in diffing tool as of the last few releases. For 61131, check out this work, sounds promising... You'd just need to figure out how to download the LogixDiff tool that they developed (maybe contact the authors?) https://dspace.cvut.cz/bitstream/handle/10467/24493/F3-BP-2014-Nedved-Miroslav-prace.pdf https://dspace.cvut.cz/bitstream/handle/10467/24493/F3-BP-20...

snowwindwaves 11y ago

can you provide some links for visual diffing tools? 90% of the programs I write are PLC programs in the IEC 61131 function block language. I would love to be able to diff and merge. PLC processors have come down so much in cost we have gone to a modular architecture where we have multiple CPUs in a plant each running an independent machine or part of the plant process partly so that one programmer can work on the program for 1 CPU without having to merge another programmer's changes. I thought this could be useful if I could use the PLC programming software (Schneider Unity) to export PDFs of the function block diagrams: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/improving-open-source-hardware-visual-diffs/ http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/improving-open-source-h... I thought I might be able to get this open source PLC programming software which includes a function block renderer to read the unity XML program exports and then I could render the function block sections myself and diff them: http://www.beremiz.org/doc http://www.beremiz.org/doc Here is the only real product I've ever seen which has a module for matlab simulink diffing: https://www.diffplug.com/ https://www.diffplug.com/ Schneider does have the UnityDiff tool which has come a long way in the last couple years and it does pretty decent diffs but there is no way to generate them automatically that I know of. I have to open both versions of the program I want to diff and then run the diffing tool. Then the visual diff output can't be exported out of the unitydiff program. printing doesn't work. I should make some feature requests.

Serow225 11y ago
Simulink comes with a built-in diffing tool as of the last few releases. For 61131, check out this work, sounds promising... You'd just need to figure out how to download the LogixDiff tool that they developed (maybe contact the authors?) https://dspace.cvut.cz/bitstream/handle/10467/24493/F3-BP-2014-Nedved-Miroslav-prace.pdf https://dspace.cvut.cz/bitstream/handle/10467/24493/F3-BP-20...