10 ms·

Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

94 points by tiago_simoes 11y ago

gat-bitty 11y ago
I loved using labview when I was in test automation
staticelf 11y ago
The title sounds like it comes from BuzzFeed.
TuringTest 11y ago
That post has no clue about the shortcomings, which were true in the past but needn't be any longer. Programmers have been doing visual programming since the advent of the visual debugger that shows updated values during program execution, and they are requesting more and more of it with tools for Live Programming like jsfiddle or LightTable (for VP in classic languages) or new languages like Apparatus[1] or Eve[2]. We are in the middle of the Visual Programming renaissance, now that the hurdles that limited composability of visual programs have been theoretically solved in the last decade by Programming Languages researchers, and computers are finally powerful enough to move visual languages without slowing to a crawl. Unfortunately, Visual Programming suffers the same curse as Artificial Intelligence: for every breakthrough that produces revolutionary new tools, it is no longer considered Visual Programming but merely "how the tools should work". [1] http://aprt.us/ http://aprt.us/ [2] http://eve-lang.com/ http://eve-lang.com/
hacker_9 11y ago
'Visual Programming' failed (and continues to fail) simply because it is a lie; just because you surround my textual code with boxes and draw arrows showing the 'flow of execution' does not make it visual! This core misunderstanding is why all these 'visual' tools suck and don't help anyone do anything practical (read: practical = complex systems). When I write code, for example a layout algorithm for a set of gui elements, I visually see the data in my head (the gui elements), then I run the algorithm and see the elements 'move' into position dependent upon their dock/anchor/margin properties (also taking into account previously docked elements positions, parent element resize delta, etc). This is the visual I need to see on screen! I need to see my real data being manipulated by my algorithms and moving from A to B. I expect with this kind of animation I could easily see when things go wrong naturally, seeing as visual processing happens with no conscious effort. Instead visual programming thinks I want to see the textual properties of my objects in memory in fancy coloured boxes, which is not the case at all.
- stkni 11y ago
  This seems pretty close to my experience. I remember thinking when I first encountered SQL Server Integration Services that this is 'visual programming'. It didn't take very long to realise that as a solution SSIS was well suited to some simple tasks where the logical actions on screen matched those taking place on the database. But as soon as those tasks became even slightly more complex, and this mirror was broken, the whole thing sort of fell apart. Then I was struggling to find ways to defeat the system to make it do what I wanted. It was with this realisation, i.e. that the solution was the problem, that I stopped using it. But it's not just SSIS that suffered this way, ActiveBatch is another example and I'm sure there are plenty more.
- fsloth 11y ago
  For fairly simple configuration tasks IMO visual programming is a powerful tool for non-programmer end users to actually create programs which are not prone to syntax errors, misguided loop conditions or such. It also means one does not need to learn yet another syntax. True, the application domains are limited, but for example the common node based computational graph generation done for example in Blender and other visual software works quite well. It's not meant for professional programming, it's about empowering the end user with programmable tools.
  - TuringTest 11y ago
    Visual programming excels at data wrangling (parsing structured data in an input/output pipeline that spits the same filtered data in a new format and structure). You're right that until now its usage has been limited to domain-specific languages for automating applications. But with the emergence of functional programming in the mainstream and visual tools that follow that paradigm, I predict that soon there will be visual tools that allow quite general programming. (I've already seen working prototypes, and they deliver on most of the promises).
  - hacker_9 11y ago
    But at what point does simple become complex? It's all well and good saying only use it for simple tasks, but when real life complexity comes knocking, you end up with this sort of magic [1] that is far worse than any C++ I've seen in the wild. [1] http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com
DonHopkins 11y ago
Spreadsheets are visual programming languages, and they seem pretty popular, and have been for a while.
- pmarreck 11y ago
  Not only that, they're functionally-evaluated!
- hacker_9 11y ago
  Low barrier of entry for high yield, thus their popularity. Though they really don't scale well, and you can end up with the stuff of nightmares.
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    It's sad how fuzzy the CSV file format is for such an important commonly used kind of file. Like how the name of the first column can't be "ID" or Office will give you an inexplicable error about some "SYLK" filter you don't care about. [1] Who would ever want to name their first column "ID", huh? [1] https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=117508 https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=117508
- rbanffy 11y ago
  Not really. You still need to write formulas using a textual language.
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    Or selecting formulas from menus and parameters by pointing and clicking and dragging, directly manipulating rows, columns and cells, and addressing parameters by relative two-dimensional offsets.
    - rbanffy 11y ago
      Selecting text from lists is not visual, neither is relative 2D offsets.
jbb555 11y ago
The problem with visual programming is the same as those UML tools where you designed classes with boxes then filled in the code later. First of all it's quicker and easier to define with text than drawing. And second of all the detail is the important bit. You can't design the high level code in isolation and then fill in how it works. You need to build up the components from the details and see how the abstractions emerge. And that's not very visual/.
mtanski 11y ago
There is one place where visual programming is alive and well and has been for a long time. That's programming PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers). It's easy to forget about PLCs[1], but it's an old and large niche in large corporations that do a lot of industrial automation like assembly lines, (automobile) manufacturing, oil & gas... Most PLC programming is done using Ladder Logic [2] and various visual tools tools for creating and editing Ladder Logic. Here's a screenshot of one such environment, RSLogix: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4yEj065J1q4/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4yEj065J1q4/maxresdefault.jpg It's an interesting data point because A) it's a highly technical field where accuracy (and verification) matters B) almost everybody who does PLC programming spends all their time in a visual programming environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  Visual programming is also alive and well in device, instrument and robotic control, where accuracy and reliability is important. At the high end of the mission critical benevolent guardian mega robot spectrum, the Maeslantkering [1] is programmed in LabView [2]. I sure hope it's accurately programmed and well debugged! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering [2] http://www.ni.com/labview/?cid=Advertising-LabVIEW-Northern_Region-GoogleAds_LabVIEW_March2015&gclid=COXRzLWrscsCFfMV0wod1HsHLg http://www.ni.com/labview/?cid=Advertising-LabVIEW-Northern_...
  - hacker_9 11y ago
    Yet user's of LabView describe it as a horror to actually use practically [1]. [1] https://jshoer.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/why-i-hate-despise-detest-and-loathe-labview/ https://jshoer.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/why-i-hate-despise-d...
    - ksnieck 11y ago
      This person is very inexperienced with LabVIEW. The first two points are not true, and there are lots of hidden shortcuts for removing mouse use. (Ctrl-Space) I was similarly furious with LabVIEW before I started working with people who had been using it for decades. It's the easiest language I've used for making graphical user interfaces.
Finnucane 11y ago
"That evolution, which seems so inevitable today, brought us better graphic cards – which lead to better games, brought us the world wide web," It should be remembered that in the early days of the web, some people argued that it should remain text-only. Basically, if you couldn't read it on the command line with Lynx, they weren't interested. Of course, the web seemed different at 9600 baud (or even slower). Being color-blind, I am not enthusiastic about the idea of visual programming, just because a lot of visual tools are color-coded in ways that are hard for me to work with, esp. if the default settings are not easily modified. Even syntax-coloring in a text editor is a chore to deal with.
VLM 11y ago
Can't communicate visually. The translation between written and spoken words, even made up technical words, is fast, accurate, unambiguous. Visual means slow, inaccurate, ambiguous, which is sometimes cool for art, but not for communication. It would be like trying to program musically, or by touch, or by (oh no) smell. There is also the productivity danger of futzing, or whatever the modern term is. In the early desktop publishing era, we were promised that instead of taking ten minutes writing a memo, we'd type one in five minutes, but reality was we'd spend an hour using a minimum of seven fonts and three text colors and pictures. So much for productivity improvement! Likewise a visual programming language would invite people with authority but no ability to endlessly rearrange "put that box over there, looks nicer" "Make that text red" "that needs a larger font".
- yiyus 11y ago
  Except we can perfectly communicate visually, and we do it all the time. It is common to draw diagrams when you are trying to understand or explain a problem. If you want to give somebody a rough idea of how your program works, it is infinitely more likely that you use some kind of drawing than music, touch or smell. I don't agree neither with visual programming inviting people to lose time in details. The same you do not lose time thinking about how to structure a sentence to write a program, you would not lose it changing colors and fonts in a visual programming environment with an enforced "syntax". I do not like visual programming (I have had very bad experiences with LabView), but I think it may be as good (or as bad) as text if the field had evolved differently.
  - justinclift 11y ago
    "Except we can perfectly communicate visually, and we do it all the time." Hmmm, someone should create a visual programming language using Dilbert characters & iconography. :)
  - wvenable 11y ago
    Visual communication without language is always much simpler and more abstract than other forms of visual communication. Without invoking a language with syntax, you simply cannot get enough information density to make it useful. The only time we generally communicate visually is when we want to express something with less detail (e.g. charts, diagrams, graphs, emoji, etc).
egraether 11y ago
I'm currently working on a developer tool that leverages the advantages of visualization not for writing source code, but for navigation and understanding. Coati, a source explorer for C/C++, combines graph visualization and source code interactively. The graph makes it easy to see what relationships a class or a function has, while the code still provides all the details of the implementation. https://www.coati.io/ https://www.coati.io/
- kelvin0 11y ago
  So it would be like a souped-up Visual Assist (as used in VS C++)?
anthk 11y ago
Smalltalk is pretty close. I use the GNU one (yeah, I know about Pharo) and is awesome you can switch between a Smalltalk scripting and the VisualGST browser.
jerf 11y ago
It is a very strange essay form to give multiple reasons why a thing has not worked very well, then end it with the conclusion that people just irrationally don't like it because your brain is just biased against it. I don't believe in it in the general case simply because I've never seen a general-purpose visual programming language work. Show me one and show me lots of people choosing it freely and I'll believe just fine. I'm not holding my breath, though. (There are certainly specialized ones that meet this bar.) Most analyses of this problem fall prey to the "anything can be made to look good if you only consider the positives of one side and the negatives of the other" effect. Visual advocates generally make wild promises about the positives of visual programming, which turn out to much harder to manifest than imagine in your head, and then make silly criticisms of textual languages, mistaking accidental issues of complexity for fundamental issues in the language. (Visual languages, just as one example, have no special protection against spaghetti code, any more than anything else does. Spaghetti code is not caused by textual languages, it's caused by developers creating spaghetti code from the spaghetti concepts in their heads.) So not only are the analyses incomplete, examining only the positives of visual languages and the negatives of textual languages, most of the ones I see are even pretty terrible on those terms. If you want do this, you need to look at both the pros and the cons of both sides, fairly. And if you haven't got a solid set of positives on the textual side and negatives on the visual side, go back and do it again. (I'm not saying you must conclude that the net benefit is to text. You may have things that outweigh what I mentioned and your sum may come out in favor of visual programming. I'm simply saying if you can't explain in a sensible manner why text has been successful and why existing visual languages have failed, you do not have an analysis. You have a wish.)
- hacker_9 11y ago
  To add to this, I present to you screenshots of visual programming spaghetti code in all of it's glory [1]. [1] http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com
  - s_kilk 11y ago
    Takes me back to my Max/MSP days.
rbanffy 11y ago
I found it odd there is no mention to Scratch or Scheme Bricks. https://vimeo.com/62615513 https://vimeo.com/62615513
- fsloth 11y ago
  This. Scratch is the killer application of visual programming. It's educational, yes, but it's excellent at that (from experiences from my two kids).
- AstroJetson 11y ago
  Is there a production system or game for sale that's written in Scratch?
Danieru 11y ago
At work we use a blend of C++ with Unreal Engine's visual programming language Blueprints. I am going to be honest with you guys here: I love blueprints. They are very limited compared, lacking even maps. When it comes to connecting existing behavior together they are king. Consider the parts of game development which cannot be made generic. By sticking those in Blueprints we get nice high level code.
- failrate 11y ago
  I was a skeptic of visual programming, but experience has taught me that Blueprints is a good enough language for a large set of tasks.
- bholzer 11y ago
  Blueprints are by far the best experience I have had with visual programming
fsloth 11y ago
Visual programming is doing quite well in editing computational graphs in software such as Maya or Blender.
ThomPete 11y ago
Here is a comprehensive list of different visual programming languages. http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarmming-languages-snapshots/ http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarm... The issue isn't visual programming but rather that we haven't found many good cases to use it still. I do think visual programming is going to have a bigger and bigger impact in things like robotics, space exploration etc where you need more tactile access to computation power. It's kind of like with the idea of a 3d interface. It only make sense when the holistic whole rather than the details are important. It makes no sense to create a 3d warehouse I can walk around when I could just do a search and a list. But you wouldn't necessarily want to control a robot doing repairs on your spaceship by having to program it every time you wanted it to do something new.
gk1 11y ago
Similar discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204017 (From my submission just 6 days ago.)
bantunes 11y ago
I don't get it - isn't the Outsystems Platform (following the link from the blog) a visual programming environment? This article seems very odd coming from Outsystems itself. What am I missing here?
- nwah1 11y ago
  Showing that you're aware of all the drawbacks may give customers more confidence that they've been addressing them. I've used outsystems, and it was straightforward. Although I prefer C#.
- zapov 11y ago
  They are probably dissatisfied with developer stance toward their RAD framework. I'm sure various business apps can be built successfully on top of their Visual programming IDE, but even Microsoft has mostly abandoned that route. But I dislike that even they propagate the lie that systems are slow when built on top of "High level language". That is mostly an optimization problem and you can often optimize well beyond what people would be willing to do in lower level language.
im_down_w_otp 11y ago
Quartz Composer is a pretty effective visual programming environment. At least as far as a particular problem domain is concerned.
- felixbraun 11y ago
  To illustrate of what is possible with Quartz Composer: https://youtu.be/eUEr4P_RWDA https://youtu.be/eUEr4P_RWDA
carsongross 11y ago
Visual programming does not work well mostly due to a physical problem: typing characters into a computer is much faster and flexible at generating imperative code than using a mouse. There are declarative domains, such as simple UI building, where that is less true, but even then, when you kick out to the event handler, text is much faster. IntelliJ has done more for visual programming, by integrating visual/wizard aspects seamlessly into a text-dominant environment, than almost all the visual programming advocates of the last fifty years. Visual environments do demo well, and sometimes convince businessmen that they won't need to pay those annoying and expensive programmers so much money. Hence its enduring appeal to the business world.
aniijbod 11y ago
Software developed using visual programming languages often has the potential/necessity to include content which constitutes a 'visual/non-visual hybrid' as the application becomes more complex: the boxes to which arrows are connected usually contain things which are lines of text/symbols/formulae, i.e. are not 'diagrammatic'. Visual programming languages tend to use diagrams for structure and 'notationally rich text' for content and are therefore addressing requirements for simplifying the representation of and increasing the intelligibility of the structure of application development as their highest priority. The reason why this rationale can seem to be problematic is because justifying/achieving the job of meaningfully 'separating structure from content' in software brings it's own highly contingent/subjective challenges (as any detractor of object-oriented design will be aware). For instance, how far could/should you go in trying to 'diagrammatise' the notational content of boxes in a boxes and arrows language. Is the fact that you are diagrammatising the app at all enough of a benefit in terms of reducing the learning curve/programming aptitude requirement, such that 'further/total diagrammatisation' is nothing more than a 'diminishing returns' consideration? What criteria do you use to decide the 'diagramtic benefit limit'? The biggest growing business in software development today is 'triple A games development' and visual programming languages are used as a way of giving designers the means to create content and gameplay without requiring the designer to have programming skill levels that match those of developers (developers can then optimise the designer's work by converting it into C++ to get the frame rate up and integrating it with the rest of their native codebase). Here's an example of an impressive case in point done in UE4 Blueprints without a single line of C++: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCandEgtHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCandEgtHo
127001brewer 11y ago
...otherwise you might just end up in the wrong side of history. And I don't believe it worked within the US Army [0][1][2] - unless I'm not correctly remembering the history of Outsystem's Visual Programming there... [0] https://www.outsystems.com/company/news/2012/outsystems-us-army/ https://www.outsystems.com/company/news/2012/outsystems-us-a... [1] http://www.army.mil/article/96352/SEC_s_Cloud_Mil_solution_for_DoD/ http://www.army.mil/article/96352/SEC_s_Cloud_Mil_solution_f... [2] http://www.afcea.org/content/?q=us-army-innovates-cloud-computing-front http://www.afcea.org/content/?q=us-army-innovates-cloud-comp...
pier25 11y ago
Visual programming is exploding in Unreal Engine with Blueprints to define in-game behaviours. https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/index.html https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/i... I for myself think visual programming is not really programming, since by following that train of thought any GUI like Photoshop Actions could be considered programming.
tluyben2 11y ago
I worked quite a bit with Outsystems and like with all the tools that use boxes(/balls) with lines between them as 'visual programming', it depends largely on how you organise things if / when it becomes a big mess. After a while of working with it we usually just wrote what we needed in C# and when we had very abstract things hooked them up. It looks/works well but needs a lot of discipline (and thus training) and it's crazy expensive (for what it does) imho.
murukesh_s 11y ago
IMO, Visual programming does not have a proper definition yet. Coding frontend and coding backend are altogether two different things and sometimes users confuse the application of visual authoring (programming) in one area with the other. But I believe it is the future. I bet you won't be carrying your laptop, enslaved by the physical keyboard, which is necessary for traditional 'coding' with you in 2030. You would be dragging and dropping stuff, perhaps in Virtual reality headset or through voice or gesture to build what you want, just like you would author in a visual platform like Adobe illustrator or in a 3d authoring tool. Visual programming have it's own strength and weaknesses. For e.g. Creating algorithms from scratch in a Visual programming is not very productive (yet), but authoring business logic is highly effective in Visual programming. How many times, as a regular programmer you have had to write an algorithm? Most often it's just business logic that we tag under the category of an algorithm, which is not right. Algorithms are very generic piece of logic and business logic applies to your own problem/data specifically. If you have a closer look you realize that we are simply reusing algorithms or modules (created by a smaller group of people comparatively) to build the rules/business logic. What we do is mostly write glue code. we don't really need to code for that. There are tons of examples for highly successful application of visual programming. But as an average web developer you never get to see that. Reason - Visual authoring tools are highly expensive and hence are confined to fortune 500 companies. That along with lack of quality open source implementations are the reason for visual programming to never take off among general web programming community. Even the newer generation ones like Treeline (for backend) and Bubble.is (frontend) are also closed source. NoFlo is open source and it almost started to create some buzz, but the team got sidetracked apparently, and they are using dataflow method for authoring frontend which is a highly inefficient. You want to see successful application of Visual programming in real life? Ever heard of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) ? Business Process Automation (BPMN/BPEL) ? Extract Transform and Load (ETL)? They all employ Visual programming to a great extend and are multi-billion dollar businesses. Do a google image search of following, in no particular order. Dell bhoomi (EAI) Tibco Business Works (EAI) Snaplogic (Founded by Informatica ex. CEO) (EAI) MuleESB/Anypoint studio (EAI) Oracle BPEL (Business process automation) Tibco iProcess (Business process automation) Mendix (Web app development) Webratio (Web app development) (+lots of others if you dig out)
- 11y ago
vmorgulis 11y ago
No mention of the Deutsch limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch_limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch_limit
musesum 11y ago
I think visual programming would match some problem domains very well, such as games (Unreal Blueprints), music (Reason, Max, PD), Neural Nets (???), UI (Quartz Composer), robotics (???), as well as the already mentioned spreadsheets. Most of these domains focus on flow and transition of scalars. The problem that I've had in the past with PD and MAX is in coordinating of multiple inputs that flow into a node. Sometimes I'd have to create a special node to properly sequence inputs. But, that is a limitation of the tool, not the idiom. Another problem is how to explore and manipulate a flow graph? I like the idea of using a force directed graph. Here is one, where I mapped a visual music synthesizer to Jeffry Heer's Prefuse toolkit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a703TTbxghc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a703TTbxghc Would love to explore authoring flow, using force directed graphs on an iPad pro + pencil (and its ilk), where one could not only draw arc between nodes, but also between convex hulls of a collection of nodes.
n2dasun 11y ago
I used RAPTOR in a generic programming class at community college when trying to get into grad school 3.5 years ago. I was somewhat impressed with it, despite the bugs. http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/ http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/
kelvin0 11y ago
I have many time mused at having visual elements integrated into your code, to better explain or schematize some concepts (which many times cannot be easily explained by mere comments). The future is not visual programming, it's augmented textual programming (ATP). You heard it here first folks.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Gnu Radio Control is a perfectly fine visual language for its problem domain: http://www.joshknows.com/grc http://www.joshknows.com/grc
rajatrocks 11y ago
I interned at VPL Research[1] in 1992 and they had a Mac-based VPL for controlling objects in VR called Body Electric[2] that was really fun to use - especially since I'd never seen anything like it. I implemented gravity for objects and a virtual arm using it. If I remember correctly, debugging could be a challenge. It was later interfaced with Macromedia Director[3] to control desktop apps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research [2] http://www.jaronlanier.com/vpl.html http://www.jaronlanier.com/vpl.html [3] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/bounce/bounce.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/bounce/bounce.html
AshleysBrain 11y ago
We use a visual programming system in our startup's game development tool Construct 2 [1]. We may not be Visual Basic big (yet!) but we're running a successful business on a visual programming IDE with lots of users who love it! [1] https://www.scirra.com https://www.scirra.com
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
blt 11y ago
Is there any visual programming language well-suited to implementing complex data structures like red-black trees? What about a recursive descent parser? File system? I have not used visual languages extensively, but it seems like they are better suited to simple control flows with flat data structures and limited state mutation. This would explain their success for graphics shaders, audio, industrial control, etc.

94 points by tiago_simoes 11y ago

gat-bitty 11y ago

I loved using labview when I was in test automation

staticelf 11y ago

The title sounds like it comes from BuzzFeed.

TuringTest 11y ago

That post has no clue about the shortcomings, which were true in the past but needn't be any longer. Programmers have been doing visual programming since the advent of the visual debugger that shows updated values during program execution, and they are requesting more and more of it with tools for Live Programming like jsfiddle or LightTable (for VP in classic languages) or new languages like Apparatus[1] or Eve[2]. We are in the middle of the Visual Programming renaissance, now that the hurdles that limited composability of visual programs have been theoretically solved in the last decade by Programming Languages researchers, and computers are finally powerful enough to move visual languages without slowing to a crawl. Unfortunately, Visual Programming suffers the same curse as Artificial Intelligence: for every breakthrough that produces revolutionary new tools, it is no longer considered Visual Programming but merely "how the tools should work". [1] http://aprt.us/ http://aprt.us/ [2] http://eve-lang.com/ http://eve-lang.com/

hacker_9 11y ago

'Visual Programming' failed (and continues to fail) simply because it is a lie; just because you surround my textual code with boxes and draw arrows showing the 'flow of execution' does not make it visual! This core misunderstanding is why all these 'visual' tools suck and don't help anyone do anything practical (read: practical = complex systems). When I write code, for example a layout algorithm for a set of gui elements, I visually see the data in my head (the gui elements), then I run the algorithm and see the elements 'move' into position dependent upon their dock/anchor/margin properties (also taking into account previously docked elements positions, parent element resize delta, etc). This is the visual I need to see on screen! I need to see my real data being manipulated by my algorithms and moving from A to B. I expect with this kind of animation I could easily see when things go wrong naturally, seeing as visual processing happens with no conscious effort. Instead visual programming thinks I want to see the textual properties of my objects in memory in fancy coloured boxes, which is not the case at all.

stkni 11y ago
This seems pretty close to my experience. I remember thinking when I first encountered SQL Server Integration Services that this is 'visual programming'. It didn't take very long to realise that as a solution SSIS was well suited to some simple tasks where the logical actions on screen matched those taking place on the database. But as soon as those tasks became even slightly more complex, and this mirror was broken, the whole thing sort of fell apart. Then I was struggling to find ways to defeat the system to make it do what I wanted. It was with this realisation, i.e. that the solution was the problem, that I stopped using it. But it's not just SSIS that suffered this way, ActiveBatch is another example and I'm sure there are plenty more.
fsloth 11y ago
For fairly simple configuration tasks IMO visual programming is a powerful tool for non-programmer end users to actually create programs which are not prone to syntax errors, misguided loop conditions or such. It also means one does not need to learn yet another syntax. True, the application domains are limited, but for example the common node based computational graph generation done for example in Blender and other visual software works quite well. It's not meant for professional programming, it's about empowering the end user with programmable tools.
- TuringTest 11y ago
  Visual programming excels at data wrangling (parsing structured data in an input/output pipeline that spits the same filtered data in a new format and structure). You're right that until now its usage has been limited to domain-specific languages for automating applications. But with the emergence of functional programming in the mainstream and visual tools that follow that paradigm, I predict that soon there will be visual tools that allow quite general programming. (I've already seen working prototypes, and they deliver on most of the promises).
- hacker_9 11y ago
  But at what point does simple become complex? It's all well and good saying only use it for simple tasks, but when real life complexity comes knocking, you end up with this sort of magic [1] that is far worse than any C++ I've seen in the wild. [1] http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com

DonHopkins 11y ago

Spreadsheets are visual programming languages, and they seem pretty popular, and have been for a while.

pmarreck 11y ago
Not only that, they're functionally-evaluated!
hacker_9 11y ago
Low barrier of entry for high yield, thus their popularity. Though they really don't scale well, and you can end up with the stuff of nightmares.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  It's sad how fuzzy the CSV file format is for such an important commonly used kind of file. Like how the name of the first column can't be "ID" or Office will give you an inexplicable error about some "SYLK" filter you don't care about. [1] Who would ever want to name their first column "ID", huh? [1] https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=117508 https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=117508
rbanffy 11y ago
Not really. You still need to write formulas using a textual language.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  Or selecting formulas from menus and parameters by pointing and clicking and dragging, directly manipulating rows, columns and cells, and addressing parameters by relative two-dimensional offsets.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    Selecting text from lists is not visual, neither is relative 2D offsets.

jbb555 11y ago

The problem with visual programming is the same as those UML tools where you designed classes with boxes then filled in the code later. First of all it's quicker and easier to define with text than drawing. And second of all the detail is the important bit. You can't design the high level code in isolation and then fill in how it works. You need to build up the components from the details and see how the abstractions emerge. And that's not very visual/.

mtanski 11y ago

There is one place where visual programming is alive and well and has been for a long time. That's programming PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers). It's easy to forget about PLCs[1], but it's an old and large niche in large corporations that do a lot of industrial automation like assembly lines, (automobile) manufacturing, oil & gas... Most PLC programming is done using Ladder Logic [2] and various visual tools tools for creating and editing Ladder Logic. Here's a screenshot of one such environment, RSLogix: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4yEj065J1q4/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4yEj065J1q4/maxresdefault.jpg It's an interesting data point because A) it's a highly technical field where accuracy (and verification) matters B) almost everybody who does PLC programming spends all their time in a visual programming environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic

DonHopkins 11y ago
Visual programming is also alive and well in device, instrument and robotic control, where accuracy and reliability is important. At the high end of the mission critical benevolent guardian mega robot spectrum, the Maeslantkering [1] is programmed in LabView [2]. I sure hope it's accurately programmed and well debugged! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering [2] http://www.ni.com/labview/?cid=Advertising-LabVIEW-Northern_Region-GoogleAds_LabVIEW_March2015&gclid=COXRzLWrscsCFfMV0wod1HsHLg http://www.ni.com/labview/?cid=Advertising-LabVIEW-Northern_...
- hacker_9 11y ago
  Yet user's of LabView describe it as a horror to actually use practically [1]. [1] https://jshoer.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/why-i-hate-despise-detest-and-loathe-labview/ https://jshoer.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/why-i-hate-despise-d...
  - ksnieck 11y ago
    This person is very inexperienced with LabVIEW. The first two points are not true, and there are lots of hidden shortcuts for removing mouse use. (Ctrl-Space) I was similarly furious with LabVIEW before I started working with people who had been using it for decades. It's the easiest language I've used for making graphical user interfaces.

Finnucane 11y ago

"That evolution, which seems so inevitable today, brought us better graphic cards – which lead to better games, brought us the world wide web," It should be remembered that in the early days of the web, some people argued that it should remain text-only. Basically, if you couldn't read it on the command line with Lynx, they weren't interested. Of course, the web seemed different at 9600 baud (or even slower). Being color-blind, I am not enthusiastic about the idea of visual programming, just because a lot of visual tools are color-coded in ways that are hard for me to work with, esp. if the default settings are not easily modified. Even syntax-coloring in a text editor is a chore to deal with.

VLM 11y ago

Can't communicate visually. The translation between written and spoken words, even made up technical words, is fast, accurate, unambiguous. Visual means slow, inaccurate, ambiguous, which is sometimes cool for art, but not for communication. It would be like trying to program musically, or by touch, or by (oh no) smell. There is also the productivity danger of futzing, or whatever the modern term is. In the early desktop publishing era, we were promised that instead of taking ten minutes writing a memo, we'd type one in five minutes, but reality was we'd spend an hour using a minimum of seven fonts and three text colors and pictures. So much for productivity improvement! Likewise a visual programming language would invite people with authority but no ability to endlessly rearrange "put that box over there, looks nicer" "Make that text red" "that needs a larger font".

yiyus 11y ago
Except we can perfectly communicate visually, and we do it all the time. It is common to draw diagrams when you are trying to understand or explain a problem. If you want to give somebody a rough idea of how your program works, it is infinitely more likely that you use some kind of drawing than music, touch or smell. I don't agree neither with visual programming inviting people to lose time in details. The same you do not lose time thinking about how to structure a sentence to write a program, you would not lose it changing colors and fonts in a visual programming environment with an enforced "syntax". I do not like visual programming (I have had very bad experiences with LabView), but I think it may be as good (or as bad) as text if the field had evolved differently.
- justinclift 11y ago
  "Except we can perfectly communicate visually, and we do it all the time." Hmmm, someone should create a visual programming language using Dilbert characters & iconography. :)
- wvenable 11y ago
  Visual communication without language is always much simpler and more abstract than other forms of visual communication. Without invoking a language with syntax, you simply cannot get enough information density to make it useful. The only time we generally communicate visually is when we want to express something with less detail (e.g. charts, diagrams, graphs, emoji, etc).

egraether 11y ago

I'm currently working on a developer tool that leverages the advantages of visualization not for writing source code, but for navigation and understanding. Coati, a source explorer for C/C++, combines graph visualization and source code interactively. The graph makes it easy to see what relationships a class or a function has, while the code still provides all the details of the implementation. https://www.coati.io/ https://www.coati.io/

kelvin0 11y ago
So it would be like a souped-up Visual Assist (as used in VS C++)?

anthk 11y ago

Smalltalk is pretty close. I use the GNU one (yeah, I know about Pharo) and is awesome you can switch between a Smalltalk scripting and the VisualGST browser.

jerf 11y ago

It is a very strange essay form to give multiple reasons why a thing has not worked very well, then end it with the conclusion that people just irrationally don't like it because your brain is just biased against it. I don't believe in it in the general case simply because I've never seen a general-purpose visual programming language work. Show me one and show me lots of people choosing it freely and I'll believe just fine. I'm not holding my breath, though. (There are certainly specialized ones that meet this bar.) Most analyses of this problem fall prey to the "anything can be made to look good if you only consider the positives of one side and the negatives of the other" effect. Visual advocates generally make wild promises about the positives of visual programming, which turn out to much harder to manifest than imagine in your head, and then make silly criticisms of textual languages, mistaking accidental issues of complexity for fundamental issues in the language. (Visual languages, just as one example, have no special protection against spaghetti code, any more than anything else does. Spaghetti code is not caused by textual languages, it's caused by developers creating spaghetti code from the spaghetti concepts in their heads.) So not only are the analyses incomplete, examining only the positives of visual languages and the negatives of textual languages, most of the ones I see are even pretty terrible on those terms. If you want do this, you need to look at both the pros and the cons of both sides, fairly. And if you haven't got a solid set of positives on the textual side and negatives on the visual side, go back and do it again. (I'm not saying you must conclude that the net benefit is to text. You may have things that outweigh what I mentioned and your sum may come out in favor of visual programming. I'm simply saying if you can't explain in a sensible manner why text has been successful and why existing visual languages have failed, you do not have an analysis. You have a wish.)

hacker_9 11y ago
To add to this, I present to you screenshots of visual programming spaghetti code in all of it's glory [1]. [1] http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com
- s_kilk 11y ago
  Takes me back to my Max/MSP days.

rbanffy 11y ago

I found it odd there is no mention to Scratch or Scheme Bricks. https://vimeo.com/62615513 https://vimeo.com/62615513

fsloth 11y ago
This. Scratch is the killer application of visual programming. It's educational, yes, but it's excellent at that (from experiences from my two kids).
AstroJetson 11y ago
Is there a production system or game for sale that's written in Scratch?

Danieru 11y ago

At work we use a blend of C++ with Unreal Engine's visual programming language Blueprints. I am going to be honest with you guys here: I love blueprints. They are very limited compared, lacking even maps. When it comes to connecting existing behavior together they are king. Consider the parts of game development which cannot be made generic. By sticking those in Blueprints we get nice high level code.

failrate 11y ago
I was a skeptic of visual programming, but experience has taught me that Blueprints is a good enough language for a large set of tasks.
bholzer 11y ago
Blueprints are by far the best experience I have had with visual programming

fsloth 11y ago

Visual programming is doing quite well in editing computational graphs in software such as Maya or Blender.

ThomPete 11y ago

Here is a comprehensive list of different visual programming languages. http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarmming-languages-snapshots/ http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarm... The issue isn't visual programming but rather that we haven't found many good cases to use it still. I do think visual programming is going to have a bigger and bigger impact in things like robotics, space exploration etc where you need more tactile access to computation power. It's kind of like with the idea of a 3d interface. It only make sense when the holistic whole rather than the details are important. It makes no sense to create a 3d warehouse I can walk around when I could just do a search and a list. But you wouldn't necessarily want to control a robot doing repairs on your spaceship by having to program it every time you wanted it to do something new.

gk1 11y ago

Similar discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204017 (From my submission just 6 days ago.)

bantunes 11y ago

I don't get it - isn't the Outsystems Platform (following the link from the blog) a visual programming environment? This article seems very odd coming from Outsystems itself. What am I missing here?

nwah1 11y ago
Showing that you're aware of all the drawbacks may give customers more confidence that they've been addressing them. I've used outsystems, and it was straightforward. Although I prefer C#.
zapov 11y ago
They are probably dissatisfied with developer stance toward their RAD framework. I'm sure various business apps can be built successfully on top of their Visual programming IDE, but even Microsoft has mostly abandoned that route. But I dislike that even they propagate the lie that systems are slow when built on top of "High level language". That is mostly an optimization problem and you can often optimize well beyond what people would be willing to do in lower level language.

im_down_w_otp 11y ago

Quartz Composer is a pretty effective visual programming environment. At least as far as a particular problem domain is concerned.

felixbraun 11y ago
To illustrate of what is possible with Quartz Composer: https://youtu.be/eUEr4P_RWDA https://youtu.be/eUEr4P_RWDA

carsongross 11y ago

Visual programming does not work well mostly due to a physical problem: typing characters into a computer is much faster and flexible at generating imperative code than using a mouse. There are declarative domains, such as simple UI building, where that is less true, but even then, when you kick out to the event handler, text is much faster. IntelliJ has done more for visual programming, by integrating visual/wizard aspects seamlessly into a text-dominant environment, than almost all the visual programming advocates of the last fifty years. Visual environments do demo well, and sometimes convince businessmen that they won't need to pay those annoying and expensive programmers so much money. Hence its enduring appeal to the business world.

aniijbod 11y ago

Software developed using visual programming languages often has the potential/necessity to include content which constitutes a 'visual/non-visual hybrid' as the application becomes more complex: the boxes to which arrows are connected usually contain things which are lines of text/symbols/formulae, i.e. are not 'diagrammatic'. Visual programming languages tend to use diagrams for structure and 'notationally rich text' for content and are therefore addressing requirements for simplifying the representation of and increasing the intelligibility of the structure of application development as their highest priority. The reason why this rationale can seem to be problematic is because justifying/achieving the job of meaningfully 'separating structure from content' in software brings it's own highly contingent/subjective challenges (as any detractor of object-oriented design will be aware). For instance, how far could/should you go in trying to 'diagrammatise' the notational content of boxes in a boxes and arrows language. Is the fact that you are diagrammatising the app at all enough of a benefit in terms of reducing the learning curve/programming aptitude requirement, such that 'further/total diagrammatisation' is nothing more than a 'diminishing returns' consideration? What criteria do you use to decide the 'diagramtic benefit limit'? The biggest growing business in software development today is 'triple A games development' and visual programming languages are used as a way of giving designers the means to create content and gameplay without requiring the designer to have programming skill levels that match those of developers (developers can then optimise the designer's work by converting it into C++ to get the frame rate up and integrating it with the rest of their native codebase). Here's an example of an impressive case in point done in UE4 Blueprints without a single line of C++: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCandEgtHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCandEgtHo

127001brewer 11y ago

...otherwise you might just end up in the wrong side of history. And I don't believe it worked within the US Army [0][1][2] - unless I'm not correctly remembering the history of Outsystem's Visual Programming there... [0] https://www.outsystems.com/company/news/2012/outsystems-us-army/ https://www.outsystems.com/company/news/2012/outsystems-us-a... [1] http://www.army.mil/article/96352/SEC_s_Cloud_Mil_solution_for_DoD/ http://www.army.mil/article/96352/SEC_s_Cloud_Mil_solution_f... [2] http://www.afcea.org/content/?q=us-army-innovates-cloud-computing-front http://www.afcea.org/content/?q=us-army-innovates-cloud-comp...

pier25 11y ago

Visual programming is exploding in Unreal Engine with Blueprints to define in-game behaviours. https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/index.html https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/i... I for myself think visual programming is not really programming, since by following that train of thought any GUI like Photoshop Actions could be considered programming.

tluyben2 11y ago

I worked quite a bit with Outsystems and like with all the tools that use boxes(/balls) with lines between them as 'visual programming', it depends largely on how you organise things if / when it becomes a big mess. After a while of working with it we usually just wrote what we needed in C# and when we had very abstract things hooked them up. It looks/works well but needs a lot of discipline (and thus training) and it's crazy expensive (for what it does) imho.

murukesh_s 11y ago

IMO, Visual programming does not have a proper definition yet. Coding frontend and coding backend are altogether two different things and sometimes users confuse the application of visual authoring (programming) in one area with the other. But I believe it is the future. I bet you won't be carrying your laptop, enslaved by the physical keyboard, which is necessary for traditional 'coding' with you in 2030. You would be dragging and dropping stuff, perhaps in Virtual reality headset or through voice or gesture to build what you want, just like you would author in a visual platform like Adobe illustrator or in a 3d authoring tool. Visual programming have it's own strength and weaknesses. For e.g. Creating algorithms from scratch in a Visual programming is not very productive (yet), but authoring business logic is highly effective in Visual programming. How many times, as a regular programmer you have had to write an algorithm? Most often it's just business logic that we tag under the category of an algorithm, which is not right. Algorithms are very generic piece of logic and business logic applies to your own problem/data specifically. If you have a closer look you realize that we are simply reusing algorithms or modules (created by a smaller group of people comparatively) to build the rules/business logic. What we do is mostly write glue code. we don't really need to code for that. There are tons of examples for highly successful application of visual programming. But as an average web developer you never get to see that. Reason - Visual authoring tools are highly expensive and hence are confined to fortune 500 companies. That along with lack of quality open source implementations are the reason for visual programming to never take off among general web programming community. Even the newer generation ones like Treeline (for backend) and Bubble.is (frontend) are also closed source. NoFlo is open source and it almost started to create some buzz, but the team got sidetracked apparently, and they are using dataflow method for authoring frontend which is a highly inefficient. You want to see successful application of Visual programming in real life? Ever heard of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) ? Business Process Automation (BPMN/BPEL) ? Extract Transform and Load (ETL)? They all employ Visual programming to a great extend and are multi-billion dollar businesses. Do a google image search of following, in no particular order. Dell bhoomi (EAI) Tibco Business Works (EAI) Snaplogic (Founded by Informatica ex. CEO) (EAI) MuleESB/Anypoint studio (EAI) Oracle BPEL (Business process automation) Tibco iProcess (Business process automation) Mendix (Web app development) Webratio (Web app development) (+lots of others if you dig out)

11y ago

vmorgulis 11y ago

No mention of the Deutsch limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch_limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch_limit

musesum 11y ago

I think visual programming would match some problem domains very well, such as games (Unreal Blueprints), music (Reason, Max, PD), Neural Nets (???), UI (Quartz Composer), robotics (???), as well as the already mentioned spreadsheets. Most of these domains focus on flow and transition of scalars. The problem that I've had in the past with PD and MAX is in coordinating of multiple inputs that flow into a node. Sometimes I'd have to create a special node to properly sequence inputs. But, that is a limitation of the tool, not the idiom. Another problem is how to explore and manipulate a flow graph? I like the idea of using a force directed graph. Here is one, where I mapped a visual music synthesizer to Jeffry Heer's Prefuse toolkit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a703TTbxghc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a703TTbxghc Would love to explore authoring flow, using force directed graphs on an iPad pro + pencil (and its ilk), where one could not only draw arc between nodes, but also between convex hulls of a collection of nodes.

n2dasun 11y ago

I used RAPTOR in a generic programming class at community college when trying to get into grad school 3.5 years ago. I was somewhat impressed with it, despite the bugs. http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/ http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/

kelvin0 11y ago

I have many time mused at having visual elements integrated into your code, to better explain or schematize some concepts (which many times cannot be easily explained by mere comments). The future is not visual programming, it's augmented textual programming (ATP). You heard it here first folks.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago

Gnu Radio Control is a perfectly fine visual language for its problem domain: http://www.joshknows.com/grc http://www.joshknows.com/grc

rajatrocks 11y ago

I interned at VPL Research[1] in 1992 and they had a Mac-based VPL for controlling objects in VR called Body Electric[2] that was really fun to use - especially since I'd never seen anything like it. I implemented gravity for objects and a virtual arm using it. If I remember correctly, debugging could be a challenge. It was later interfaced with Macromedia Director[3] to control desktop apps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research [2] http://www.jaronlanier.com/vpl.html http://www.jaronlanier.com/vpl.html [3] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/bounce/bounce.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/bounce/bounce.html

AshleysBrain 11y ago

We use a visual programming system in our startup's game development tool Construct 2 [1]. We may not be Visual Basic big (yet!) but we're running a successful business on a visual programming IDE with lots of users who love it! [1] https://www.scirra.com https://www.scirra.com

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

blt 11y ago

Is there any visual programming language well-suited to implementing complex data structures like red-black trees? What about a recursive descent parser? File system? I have not used visual languages extensively, but it seems like they are better suited to simple control flows with flat data structures and limited state mutation. This would explain their success for graphics shaders, audio, industrial control, etc.