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LabView is the classic example of graphical programming used in professional practice. It works well, but has a large learning curve. My first paid programming

LabView is the classic example of graphical programming used in professional practice. It works well, but has a large learning curve. My first paid programming job was an undergraduate summer research project. I was tasked with re-writing a LabView function, a simple coefficient of variation - mean divided by standard deviation, in C++. LabView can call C++ DLLs. The resulting function was 5x faster and meant that our imaging of blood flow could be done in real-time vs. recorded and post-processed. FWIW, it took 10x as long to get the DLL call to work as it did to drag-and-drop the coefficient of variation box into the GUI. There are certainly rapid prototyping benefits to be had with higher-level languages. Nowadays I prototype in Python and rewrite line-by-line in C++ if I really need the speed. I think GUI programming languages might serve a similar purpose.

mlevental 9y ago
>line-by-line in c++ I don't understand how/why people do this? the languages are so different I can't imagine doing it - libraries, control structures, types! what exactly are you prototyping then? just the shape of the code?
- aabajian 9y ago
  You use black-box unit tests developed against the Python code. You then write identical code in C++ that produces the same output (i.e. passes the unit tests). Then you apply optimizations/refactoring specific to C++. It is the latter - premature optimization - that is a pain in lower-level languages like C++, and which stops you from getting the correct result.
  - mlevental 9y ago
    >You use black-box unit tests developed against the Python code. man that makes even less sense to me. do you have an example of code produced this way?
dbcurtis 9y ago
Have you considered Cython?