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then why does everyone sketch a picture when trying to convey an idea? text is obviously useful but so is visual information. the complete dismissal of visual p

then why does everyone sketch a picture when trying to convey an idea? text is obviously useful but so is visual information. the complete dismissal of visual programming by text-based programmers is often infuriating. visual programming can provide an immediate indication of structure and dataflow, something that text-based languages struggle with. in my mind, the best case scenario is some sort of hybrid, where visual and text representations take over on what they're best at, yielding to the other when it makes sense. the way people work on mathematics is a great example of this. drawings, diagrams, graphs, shapes, etc. are used to convey structural information where text and symbols are used to convey more detailed, descriptive information.

zepolen 9y ago
They are adding words in the form of thoughts or speech to describe the drawing.
- nikofeyn 9y ago
  that's not always true. the visual representation of an idea that can also be conveyed in text can oftentimes provide additional information not easily gleaned from the text-based representation. the easiest example of this is the visual representation of the graph of a function. a more advanced one is feynman diagrams. also think of symbology that is so ubiquitous in mathematics. it's much easier to write x_n->x absolutely rather than detail out the text-based definition of absolute convergence. obviously this latter idea is close to writing a function or procedure in code that consolidates an idea to a smaller textual representation, but symbology in mathematics far outpaces that of symbology in text-based programming languages.
wybiral 9y ago
There are hybrid languages, like Python... Visual whitespace denotes blocks while visual symbols like "if", "for", and "def" denote the meaning of those blocks. (and sane programmers use visual layout to convey structure in every language)
- baddox 9y ago
  I don't think that meaningful whitespace counts as "visual programming." That just means that a whitespace character has meaning, just like a word character or a punctuation character. It's still purely text-based. I think that "visual programming" means that the editing environment to some extent visually represents the intended outcome of the program. WYSIWYG web editing is the obvious extreme example of this. Whitespace in a Python program has no visual correlation to the output of the program.
  - wybiral 9y ago
    Ah, I see. But other than WYSIWYG editing I'm having trouble imagining how a language could be general purpose and could still be visually representative of the output of the program rather than the behavior of the program (much like the visual layout and syntax coloration of modern text languages conveys). Are there other examples of those cases? Edit: maybe I was presumptive to assume that they had to be "general purpose". Are we talking about more narrow domain-specific languages here?
    - azhenley 9y ago
      I think the "visually representative of the output" isn't a suitable way to describe it. The visual language I always think of is LabVIEW. It is very different than a textual language.
      - posterboy 9y ago
        No it's not. A for loop is a block with inputs, a space for sub-blocks, and outputs. To add an iteration limit, a box with a literal number can be attached. This is visually represented of the program's flow graph. Which does make sense when actual signals are concerned, to extend the wire metaphor of analogue equipment. Reason did that too, where instruments had a back pane to connect them to effect panels via actually visualized wire plug-in. Buzz or unreal blueed apply the same idea, as does model-sim. Block diagrams are just a very popular abstraction in signal theoretic topics. So Algol syntax, the languages like C being close to the hardware, uses the same visual metaphor. Erlang (Prolog) for example doesn't so much. Sure you have parameters, but matching blocks aren't strictly evaluated in sequence.
baddox 9y ago
> then why does everyone sketch a picture when trying to convey an idea? Does everyone do that? I think I very rarely do. When I need to convey an idea on a whiteboard, it's still almost completely text, with a few extra symbols like directional arrows that I think are still effectively just symbolic written language. Literally the only time I can remember sketching a picture to convey an idea is while playing Pictionary. The entire premise of that game is that it is much more difficult to get someone to say a specific word by drawing a picture than by simply writing down the word.
- analog31 9y ago
  Sometimes they do. In my view the most prominent example is documentation for installing computer hardware and software on Windows computers. The instructions will be a series of pictures, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one (sic). This goes on for page after page. And when the OS is updated and the dialogs all change a bit, the documentation becomes confusing or even obsolete. In contrast, the instructions for the Linux version of the same thing will be something like: sudo apt-get install this sudo bing bam boom ...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    I also hate that, but I always felt it was more a failure of the documentation writer than the GUI. "Click File -> Settings -> Whatever, open the Something tab, and click the "Do It" button under the Stuff subheading" can easily replace half a dozen unnecessary images.
    - Too 9y ago
      GUI is documentation. If you have to document how to use your GUI you are doing it wrong.
      - 9y ago
gt_ 9y ago
They do that when the idea is visual/geometrical or when they use an imaginative visual model to process it, which is one of the things we actually do with text. Text evolved specifically to assist with ideas images(glyphs) could not.
pvinis 9y ago
Check out this video. He has a nice explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo Basically, painting/diagram is good for more abstract overview, and text/code is for more specific instructions.
- LrnByTeach 9y ago
  > Check out this video. He has a nice explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo >Basically, painting/diagram is good for more abstract overview, and text/code is for more specific instructions. very well Said ..
abeyer 9y ago
Sketching a picture can help for certain classes of problems, but I think that is far from universal: it often tends to be of less use for logical concepts than structural ones, for example. Beyond that, though, even when a sketch is a useful tool, I find I seldom use the computer to create it. A whiteboard, notebook, or back of an envelope all seem easier than working with typical graphical input mechanisms that are commonly available. Good touchscreens are a step in the right direction, but still far from perfect and far from universally available, especially on desktops. Aside from any innate problems with graphical programming in general, I think this input problem makes the approach generally unappealing at the moment. It's not an insurmountable issue, but until there are good input mechanisms that are as common as keyboards, I think you will just find that it is hard to reach the critical mass a new representation needs. I know that input speed is not really a limiting factor in most programming, and maybe shouldn't be the deciding factor, but given how attached to their text editors programmers already are, and how disruptive and frustrating it can be to have to switch, I think it's clear that it is an issue.
mannykannot 9y ago
> Then why does everyone sketch a picture when trying to convey an idea? Because pictures are helpful, but neither necessary, nor, in most cases, sufficient. Just look at the use of pictures in science and technology generally (e.g. circuit schematics, Feynman diagrams), and try to imagine understanding what is being presented without reading the words. I have seen examples where pictures can help a lot (I am thinking of a pictorial demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem, for example), but I am not aware of a constrained pictorial formalism that is both general and expressive enough to do the job of a programming language (directed graphs may be general enough, but are not expressive enough; when extended to fix this, they lose the generality.) >The complete dismissal of visual programming by text-based programmers is often infuriating. I, for one, would be thrilled to see an example that actually works. Arguments that it should work don't count for much, otherwise. There are some hybrids that are pretty useful in their areas of applicability, such as state transition networks, dataflow models and Petri nets (note that these three examples are all annotated directed graphs.)
hbt 9y ago
The problem with having 2 representations of the same piece of information is maintaining them in sync. If we use text for specific and visual for abstraction, we still need to maintain both and there are no effective tools to do that without creating additional work.
- jononor 9y ago
  There are solutions to this. A) Let one representation be derived from the other. Easiest by making the derived representation read/view-only. B) Encapsulate the specific/low-level details into a generic black-box, which can then be composed.
c_shu 9y ago
Because each method has its pros and cons. It's a difference of generality and specificity. Consider this list as a ranking: 0 and 1 >> alphabet >> Chinese >> picture. All 4 methods can be useful in some cases. Chinese has tens of thousands of characters, some people consider the language close to pictures, but real pictures have more than that （infinite variants). Chinese is harder to parse than alphabet, and picture is harder than Chinese. (Imagine a compiler than can understand arbitrary picture!)
LoSboccacc 9y ago
Because that way you can abstract away lot of fine complexity and communicate higher order ideas faster That still means you need writing to express all the intricacies of programming the details. Alas hybrid languages where you can link developed blocks visually exists and works (bpel, webratio), but no pure visual language could let you describe the intricacies of taxation in a sane way
b0rsuk 9y ago
If you're referring to icons, good and clear icons take a lot of time to design.
real-hacker 9y ago
A picture is better than 1000 words. But, which words? or for programming, which code? Most visual programming efforts focus on representing algorithm logic with diagrams. But I think the difficulty to understand most complex programs (from my own experience) lies in the complexity of data structures, not the code logic. Reasoning about the algorithm is like reading a story, it is kinda intuitive; but for a large data structure (say a big struct with more than 20 fields), it's very hard to keep all those in your memory, you always have to go to its definition to refresh your memory, very frustrating. One of my tricks for reading a large open source project is to first find all the key data structures, draw them and the relationships on paper, then reading the code becomes easier and more pleasant. So maybe if a visual programming UI displays data structures with a visual format always on screen, it can help boost coding productivity.

zepolen 9y ago

They are adding words in the form of thoughts or speech to describe the drawing.

nikofeyn 9y ago
that's not always true. the visual representation of an idea that can also be conveyed in text can oftentimes provide additional information not easily gleaned from the text-based representation. the easiest example of this is the visual representation of the graph of a function. a more advanced one is feynman diagrams. also think of symbology that is so ubiquitous in mathematics. it's much easier to write x_n->x absolutely rather than detail out the text-based definition of absolute convergence. obviously this latter idea is close to writing a function or procedure in code that consolidates an idea to a smaller textual representation, but symbology in mathematics far outpaces that of symbology in text-based programming languages.

wybiral 9y ago

There are hybrid languages, like Python... Visual whitespace denotes blocks while visual symbols like "if", "for", and "def" denote the meaning of those blocks. (and sane programmers use visual layout to convey structure in every language)

baddox 9y ago
I don't think that meaningful whitespace counts as "visual programming." That just means that a whitespace character has meaning, just like a word character or a punctuation character. It's still purely text-based. I think that "visual programming" means that the editing environment to some extent visually represents the intended outcome of the program. WYSIWYG web editing is the obvious extreme example of this. Whitespace in a Python program has no visual correlation to the output of the program.
- wybiral 9y ago
  Ah, I see. But other than WYSIWYG editing I'm having trouble imagining how a language could be general purpose and could still be visually representative of the output of the program rather than the behavior of the program (much like the visual layout and syntax coloration of modern text languages conveys). Are there other examples of those cases? Edit: maybe I was presumptive to assume that they had to be "general purpose". Are we talking about more narrow domain-specific languages here?
  - azhenley 9y ago
    I think the "visually representative of the output" isn't a suitable way to describe it. The visual language I always think of is LabVIEW. It is very different than a textual language.
    - posterboy 9y ago
      No it's not. A for loop is a block with inputs, a space for sub-blocks, and outputs. To add an iteration limit, a box with a literal number can be attached. This is visually represented of the program's flow graph. Which does make sense when actual signals are concerned, to extend the wire metaphor of analogue equipment. Reason did that too, where instruments had a back pane to connect them to effect panels via actually visualized wire plug-in. Buzz or unreal blueed apply the same idea, as does model-sim. Block diagrams are just a very popular abstraction in signal theoretic topics. So Algol syntax, the languages like C being close to the hardware, uses the same visual metaphor. Erlang (Prolog) for example doesn't so much. Sure you have parameters, but matching blocks aren't strictly evaluated in sequence.

baddox 9y ago

> then why does everyone sketch a picture when trying to convey an idea? Does everyone do that? I think I very rarely do. When I need to convey an idea on a whiteboard, it's still almost completely text, with a few extra symbols like directional arrows that I think are still effectively just symbolic written language. Literally the only time I can remember sketching a picture to convey an idea is while playing Pictionary. The entire premise of that game is that it is much more difficult to get someone to say a specific word by drawing a picture than by simply writing down the word.

analog31 9y ago
Sometimes they do. In my view the most prominent example is documentation for installing computer hardware and software on Windows computers. The instructions will be a series of pictures, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one (sic). This goes on for page after page. And when the OS is updated and the dialogs all change a bit, the documentation becomes confusing or even obsolete. In contrast, the instructions for the Linux version of the same thing will be something like: sudo apt-get install this sudo bing bam boom ...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I also hate that, but I always felt it was more a failure of the documentation writer than the GUI. "Click File -> Settings -> Whatever, open the Something tab, and click the "Do It" button under the Stuff subheading" can easily replace half a dozen unnecessary images.
  - Too 9y ago
    GUI is documentation. If you have to document how to use your GUI you are doing it wrong.
    - 9y ago

gt_ 9y ago

They do that when the idea is visual/geometrical or when they use an imaginative visual model to process it, which is one of the things we actually do with text. Text evolved specifically to assist with ideas images(glyphs) could not.

pvinis 9y ago

Check out this video. He has a nice explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo Basically, painting/diagram is good for more abstract overview, and text/code is for more specific instructions.

LrnByTeach 9y ago
> Check out this video. He has a nice explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SvuUYQ5Fo >Basically, painting/diagram is good for more abstract overview, and text/code is for more specific instructions. very well Said ..

abeyer 9y ago

Sketching a picture can help for certain classes of problems, but I think that is far from universal: it often tends to be of less use for logical concepts than structural ones, for example. Beyond that, though, even when a sketch is a useful tool, I find I seldom use the computer to create it. A whiteboard, notebook, or back of an envelope all seem easier than working with typical graphical input mechanisms that are commonly available. Good touchscreens are a step in the right direction, but still far from perfect and far from universally available, especially on desktops. Aside from any innate problems with graphical programming in general, I think this input problem makes the approach generally unappealing at the moment. It's not an insurmountable issue, but until there are good input mechanisms that are as common as keyboards, I think you will just find that it is hard to reach the critical mass a new representation needs. I know that input speed is not really a limiting factor in most programming, and maybe shouldn't be the deciding factor, but given how attached to their text editors programmers already are, and how disruptive and frustrating it can be to have to switch, I think it's clear that it is an issue.

mannykannot 9y ago

> Then why does everyone sketch a picture when trying to convey an idea? Because pictures are helpful, but neither necessary, nor, in most cases, sufficient. Just look at the use of pictures in science and technology generally (e.g. circuit schematics, Feynman diagrams), and try to imagine understanding what is being presented without reading the words. I have seen examples where pictures can help a lot (I am thinking of a pictorial demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem, for example), but I am not aware of a constrained pictorial formalism that is both general and expressive enough to do the job of a programming language (directed graphs may be general enough, but are not expressive enough; when extended to fix this, they lose the generality.) >The complete dismissal of visual programming by text-based programmers is often infuriating. I, for one, would be thrilled to see an example that actually works. Arguments that it should work don't count for much, otherwise. There are some hybrids that are pretty useful in their areas of applicability, such as state transition networks, dataflow models and Petri nets (note that these three examples are all annotated directed graphs.)

hbt 9y ago

The problem with having 2 representations of the same piece of information is maintaining them in sync. If we use text for specific and visual for abstraction, we still need to maintain both and there are no effective tools to do that without creating additional work.

jononor 9y ago
There are solutions to this. A) Let one representation be derived from the other. Easiest by making the derived representation read/view-only. B) Encapsulate the specific/low-level details into a generic black-box, which can then be composed.

c_shu 9y ago

Because each method has its pros and cons. It's a difference of generality and specificity. Consider this list as a ranking: 0 and 1 >> alphabet >> Chinese >> picture. All 4 methods can be useful in some cases. Chinese has tens of thousands of characters, some people consider the language close to pictures, but real pictures have more than that （infinite variants). Chinese is harder to parse than alphabet, and picture is harder than Chinese. (Imagine a compiler than can understand arbitrary picture!)

LoSboccacc 9y ago

Because that way you can abstract away lot of fine complexity and communicate higher order ideas faster That still means you need writing to express all the intricacies of programming the details. Alas hybrid languages where you can link developed blocks visually exists and works (bpel, webratio), but no pure visual language could let you describe the intricacies of taxation in a sane way

b0rsuk 9y ago

If you're referring to icons, good and clear icons take a lot of time to design.

real-hacker 9y ago

A picture is better than 1000 words. But, which words? or for programming, which code? Most visual programming efforts focus on representing algorithm logic with diagrams. But I think the difficulty to understand most complex programs (from my own experience) lies in the complexity of data structures, not the code logic. Reasoning about the algorithm is like reading a story, it is kinda intuitive; but for a large data structure (say a big struct with more than 20 fields), it's very hard to keep all those in your memory, you always have to go to its definition to refresh your memory, very frustrating. One of my tricks for reading a large open source project is to first find all the key data structures, draw them and the relationships on paper, then reading the code becomes easier and more pleasant. So maybe if a visual programming UI displays data structures with a visual format always on screen, it can help boost coding productivity.