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I think the inherent suckiness with visual programming is... Imagine I was a consultant who offered to sit and watch over your shoulder and comment only on syn

I think the inherent suckiness with visual programming is... Imagine I was a consultant who offered to sit and watch over your shoulder and comment only on syntax issues. If you make a syntax mistake, I will help you fix it; "you need a closing paren here". I will also offer syntax tips constantly while you work; "looks like your going to create a list, first choose what you want the first item in the list to be". You should expect to be a little slower in exchange for these consultations I offer. Would you hire me? These are essentially the tradeoffs offered by visual programming. Slower work for syntax level help. And visual languages often have some premium cost to them. People doing significant programming don't need syntax level help.

dadadad100 3y ago
A long time ago I worked at a company trying to commercialize a visual programming framework for general use. And before that I was on a team that built a visual programming environment to define simulation models for the largest flight/other simulation company in the world. What I learned was that when a problem domain needed a visual representation they had already created it (using pencil and paper, decades ago). Think of schematic diagrams, piping and instrumentation diagrams and such. In those cases we were very successful. In cases where no such diagrams exist, we always failed to create one that stuck with the users. Text is great for code because is is extremely compact and takes advantage of things like visual rhyme. Uml, for example, can never achieve the same results
jkcxn 3y ago
It’s not syntax help thats useful about visual programming it’s the 2-way communication between the programmer and the running program, and also being able to refer to other parts of a program spatially rather than by a name. Most kinds of software don’t need these things but if you’re writing code that generates graphics or audio signals then you do, because you get to manipulate your program and see/hear effects in real-time, and also seeing how different parts of your program connects together is more important than giving names to them (where there may not be a useful name you can give them anyway) Theoretically you might be able achieve these things with only a textual representation and it could be best of both worlds

dadadad100 3y ago

A long time ago I worked at a company trying to commercialize a visual programming framework for general use. And before that I was on a team that built a visual programming environment to define simulation models for the largest flight/other simulation company in the world. What I learned was that when a problem domain needed a visual representation they had already created it (using pencil and paper, decades ago). Think of schematic diagrams, piping and instrumentation diagrams and such. In those cases we were very successful. In cases where no such diagrams exist, we always failed to create one that stuck with the users. Text is great for code because is is extremely compact and takes advantage of things like visual rhyme. Uml, for example, can never achieve the same results

jkcxn 3y ago

It’s not syntax help thats useful about visual programming it’s the 2-way communication between the programmer and the running program, and also being able to refer to other parts of a program spatially rather than by a name. Most kinds of software don’t need these things but if you’re writing code that generates graphics or audio signals then you do, because you get to manipulate your program and see/hear effects in real-time, and also seeing how different parts of your program connects together is more important than giving names to them (where there may not be a useful name you can give them anyway) Theoretically you might be able achieve these things with only a textual representation and it could be best of both worlds