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> Why VPLs failed? but they absolutely didn't ? there are entire industries based around VPLs. if you go in most music conservatories in france, you can take a

> Why VPLs failed? but they absolutely didn't ? there are entire industries based around VPLs. if you go in most music conservatories in france, you can take a cursus in computer music where you'll likely be learning Max/MSP (https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/542ee0e5e4b0e144502e4a65/1583330520203-GAILKTRPOFU7SL53UDMG/Screen+Shot+2020-02-25+at+11.13.11+PM.png?format=1000w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/542ee0e5e4b0e1...) for instance just like you'd learn bassoon or trumpet. Likewise, every year you can look for the twitter tag #nodevember where artists present what they did in mostly node-based VPLs, like the ones provided by Blender, Houdini, etc.: https://nodevember.io/ https://nodevember.io/ There are 200k posts tagged #touchdesigner on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/touchdesigner/ https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/touchdesigner/ and that's only a small fraction of things There are more LabVIEW job postings when searching on Linkedin on my country than Rust and Golang COMBINED, by quite a margin (2400 for LabVIEW, 300 for rust and 800 for golang). It looks like there's a huge "dark matter programmers" effect at work here :)

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derac 5y ago
The game engines Unity, Unreal, and Godot all have strong support for visual scripting as well.
agumonkey 5y ago
It's also contextual to the crowd, houdini guys don't live in os/framework land where cruft, legacy and culture change the way people have to program things.. they just dataflow everything naturally and the tool is made for that (and the reward is extremely high). It's a bit like c/simd vs APL
smoe 5y ago
I reckon most of professional programming done by people whose main job is not programming is either Excel or VPLs. It seems weird to me, that the saying that visual programming has failed is being repeated still. E.g I think the film and game industries would be nowhere near the fidelity they are today without those tools. Sure, it might be that VPLs are best used for scripting and not for implementing the core systems, but we are usually fine with such distinctions for "real" languages without thinking they have failed.
- kitd 5y ago
  I read somewhere that the number of Excel "programmers" in the world is an order of magnitude larger than all the professional computer programmers combined.
simulate-me 5y ago
Are node-based VPLs like Houdini Turing-complete? I've only used Grasshopper, but the sense I got was that it was not Turing-complete. If they're not Turing-complete, then I don't think "programming" is the right word. Computer-aided design would be more appropriate.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Why does Turing completeness discriminate an activity between CAD and programming? So when one writes CSS or Makefiles they are programming; but if they write systems in e.g Datalog they are doing CAD?
  - simulate-me 5y ago
    CSS is a great example. Someone who only engages with CSS and HTML would best be described as a web designer.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      CSS + HTML is Turing complete: https://lemire.me/blog/2011/03/08/breaking-news-htmlcss-is-turing-complete/ https://lemire.me/blog/2011/03/08/breaking-news-htmlcss-is-t...
      - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
        On the other hand, ACL2 isn’t Turing complete but can express many interesting programs: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/v8-4/combined-manual/index.html?topic=ACL2____TUTORIAL1-TOWERS-OF-HANOI https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/v8-4/combined-man...
        simulate-me 5y ago
        Are you sure ACL2 isn't Turing complete? I can't seem to find a proof of this.
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tfigment 5y ago
Left out are industrial programming languages for PLCs. IEC 61131 languages include function block, ladder, sequential function charts and structured text. The first three are visual. Personally preferred ST as its closest to Pascal and Ada but FB is good for real time debugging PID loops. SFC is good for state machines. I wish we had more diversity in editing environments for different tasks but all still on one IDE for debugging. Rockwell was my favorite editing environment but expensive and specialized.

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derac 5y ago

The game engines Unity, Unreal, and Godot all have strong support for visual scripting as well.

agumonkey 5y ago

It's also contextual to the crowd, houdini guys don't live in os/framework land where cruft, legacy and culture change the way people have to program things.. they just dataflow everything naturally and the tool is made for that (and the reward is extremely high). It's a bit like c/simd vs APL

smoe 5y ago

I reckon most of professional programming done by people whose main job is not programming is either Excel or VPLs. It seems weird to me, that the saying that visual programming has failed is being repeated still. E.g I think the film and game industries would be nowhere near the fidelity they are today without those tools. Sure, it might be that VPLs are best used for scripting and not for implementing the core systems, but we are usually fine with such distinctions for "real" languages without thinking they have failed.

kitd 5y ago
I read somewhere that the number of Excel "programmers" in the world is an order of magnitude larger than all the professional computer programmers combined.

simulate-me 5y ago

Are node-based VPLs like Houdini Turing-complete? I've only used Grasshopper, but the sense I got was that it was not Turing-complete. If they're not Turing-complete, then I don't think "programming" is the right word. Computer-aided design would be more appropriate.

ModernMech 5y ago
Why does Turing completeness discriminate an activity between CAD and programming? So when one writes CSS or Makefiles they are programming; but if they write systems in e.g Datalog they are doing CAD?
- simulate-me 5y ago
  CSS is a great example. Someone who only engages with CSS and HTML would best be described as a web designer.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    CSS + HTML is Turing complete: https://lemire.me/blog/2011/03/08/breaking-news-htmlcss-is-turing-complete/ https://lemire.me/blog/2011/03/08/breaking-news-htmlcss-is-t...
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      On the other hand, ACL2 isn’t Turing complete but can express many interesting programs: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/v8-4/combined-manual/index.html?topic=ACL2____TUTORIAL1-TOWERS-OF-HANOI https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/v8-4/combined-man...
      - simulate-me 5y ago
        Are you sure ACL2 isn't Turing complete? I can't seem to find a proof of this.

deleted 5y ago

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tfigment 5y ago

Left out are industrial programming languages for PLCs. IEC 61131 languages include function block, ladder, sequential function charts and structured text. The first three are visual. Personally preferred ST as its closest to Pascal and Ada but FB is good for real time debugging PID loops. SFC is good for state machines. I wish we had more diversity in editing environments for different tasks but all still on one IDE for debugging. Rockwell was my favorite editing environment but expensive and specialized.