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As a tangentaly related point... Has any visual programming language ever been successful? The guys at Epic are really pushing their blueprint system, and a lot of people like it... but its inherantly tied to the engine.
Ok, you're not going to write an OS in it - but for building games it's amazing. I use it to teach kids coding - some of the work they produce is astounding.
As a tangentaly related point... Has any visual programming language ever been successful? The guys at Epic are really pushing their blueprint system, and a lot of people like it... but its inherantly tied to the engine.
Lego still use a graphical language for their Mindstorm kits, iirc.
As a tangentaly related point... Has any visual programming language ever been successful? The guys at Epic are really pushing their blueprint system, and a lot of people like it... but its inherantly tied to the engine.
Scratch from MIT. Ok, you're not going to write an OS in it - but for building games it's amazing. I use it to teach kids coding - some of the work they produce is astounding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did a fair amount of work with LabVIEW long ago. I also played with another visual language for the Mac that was floating around in the 90s. This isn't a slam against LabVIEW, which would be unfair in any event since it's been that long and their product has changed a lot. Advantage: It seemed easy for beginners to learn how to do simple things, such as sequencing the operations and measurement in a lab experiment…
1) I think although LabView is quite useful, it's interaction design is terrible (that users play along only attests to it's utility!) 3) It's essentially a way of displaying code, so perhaps any new languages could reuse the same graph/flowchart environment. But inherently visual languages are designed either towards people who don't want to learn a language or who are performing specific tasks where the graphic flo…
But still, I think your point stands. The tools that beginners like to use, whether the underlying "language" is represented by text or graphics, tend to be fairly self contained with zero overhead and a built in lookup system for library functions and user interface design, and those systems tend to be implemented as graphical software.
As a tangentaly related point... Has any visual programming language ever been successful? The guys at Epic are really pushing their blueprint system, and a lot of people like it... but its inherantly tied to the engine.
> but its inherantly tied to the engine
There's no successful (like C in text-based programming) visual programming environment for general-purpose programming at the moment.
As a tangentaly related point... Has any visual programming language ever been successful? The guys at Epic are really pushing their blueprint system, and a lot of people like it... but its inherantly tied to the engine.
> The guys at Epic The people at Epic. Sorry, I know it's annoying, but sexism in computing isn't going to change if we don't pay attention to the language we use.
http://man.cat-v.org/unix_WWB/1/sexist
A relevant section from its man page:
[When given a file as input, sexist prints alternatives]
using neutral terms instead of sex-related terms.
For example "business executive" could easily replace
the stereotypic "businessman."
[0] I'm citing Bell Labs because they're prestigious and respected by HN.
[1] Because I'm trying to influence the vox populi, I'm using "we" imprecisely. I hope that those who disagree with me follow my argument even though I'm not speaking for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The guys at Epic The people at Epic. Sorry, I know it's annoying, but sexism in computing isn't going to change if we don't pay attention to the language we use.
I don't think 'guys' just refers to males.
"You guys" is the only usage that can refer to a mixed-gender group. Obviously, that isn't how GP used it.
As a tangentaly related point... Has any visual programming language ever been successful? The guys at Epic are really pushing their blueprint system, and a lot of people like it... but its inherantly tied to the engine.
LabVIEW's graphical language G has been around for a while and is widely used for certain kinds of things. Enough people hate it to consider it successful.
That is a very insightful quote.