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Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

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Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#51

Post by DonHopkins »

notalaser wrote: post #27
DonHopkins wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual programming is also alive and well in device, instrument and robotic control, where accuracy and reliability is important. At the high end of the mission critical benevolent guardian mega robot spectrum, the Maeslantkering [1] is programmed in LabView [2]. I sure hope it's accurately programmed and well debugged! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering [2] http://www.ni.com/labview/?cid=Advertising-La…

The Wikipedia page links to a credible article which mentions that "the software that drives it is written in C++ and consists of 200,000 lines of code for the operational system and 250,000 lines of code for the simulation systems.[2]" What am I missing?

I assume that like any mission critical benevolent guardian mega robot software, it has parts written in many different languages. It's kind of hard to count the number of lines of code written in a visual programming language. My guess is that LabView was probably used in data collection and device control, and possibly for the gui, which is what it's designed to do.

I worked with someone at TomTom who worked on it in his previous job, and whose name is mentioned in the acknowledgements of that paper. I could ask him for more information about the parts he wrote in LabView, if you like. Here's a presentation about the Maeslantkering's fault tolerant software architecture. [1]

[1] http://www.sasg.nl/sasg_30_BOS_Fault-tolerance.pdf

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#52

Post by murukesh_s »

IMO, Visual programming does not have a proper definition yet. Coding frontend and coding backend are altogether two different things and sometimes users confuse the application of visual authoring (programming) in one area with the other.

But I believe it is the future. I bet you won't be carrying your laptop, enslaved by the physical keyboard, which is necessary for traditional 'coding' with you in 2030. You would be dragging and dropping stuff, perhaps in Virtual reality headset or through voice or gesture to build what you want, just like you would author in a visual platform like Adobe illustrator or in a 3d authoring tool.

Visual programming have it's own strength and weaknesses. For e.g. Creating algorithms from scratch in a Visual programming is not very productive (yet), but authoring business logic is highly effective in Visual programming. How many times, as a regular programmer you have had to write an algorithm? Most often it's just business logic that we tag under the category of an algorithm, which is not right. Algorithms are very generic piece of logic and business logic applies to your own problem/data specifically. If you have a closer look you realize that we are simply reusing algorithms or modules (created by a smaller group of people comparatively) to build the rules/business logic. What we do is mostly write glue code. we don't really need to code for that.

There are tons of examples for highly successful application of visual programming. But as an average web developer you never get to see that. Reason - Visual authoring tools are highly expensive and hence are confined to fortune 500 companies. That along with lack of quality open source implementations are the reason for visual programming to never take off among general web programming community. Even the newer generation ones like Treeline (for backend) and Bubble.is (frontend) are also closed source. NoFlo is open source and it almost started to create some buzz, but the team got sidetracked apparently, and they are using dataflow method for authoring frontend which is a highly inefficient.

You want to see successful application of Visual programming in real life? Ever heard of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) ? Business Process Automation (BPMN/BPEL) ? Extract Transform and Load (ETL)? They all employ Visual programming to a great extend and are multi-billion dollar businesses. Do a google image search of following, in no particular order.

Dell bhoomi (EAI)

Tibco Business Works (EAI)

Snaplogic (Founded by Informatica ex. CEO) (EAI)

MuleESB/Anypoint studio (EAI)

Oracle BPEL (Business process automation)

Tibco iProcess (Business process automation)

Mendix (Web app development)

Webratio (Web app development)

(+lots of others if you dig out)

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#53

Post by mcphage »

RangerScience wrote: post #30
mtanski wrote: post #9

There is one place where visual programming is alive and well and has been for a long time. That's programming PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers). It's easy to forget about PLCs[1], but it's an old and large niche in large corporations that do a lot of industrial automation like assembly lines, (automobile) manufacturing, oil & gas... Most PLC programming is done using Ladder Logic [2] and various visual tools tool…

I'm actually reading this article while in a two-day introduction to PLC programming. It's been pretty fascinating, and is an interesting view into earlier days of programming... ...From here, I definitely feel like there's something "we" missed in how these systems work, and the situations they describe. But there's also a great deal that they've missed - and are stuck in the 80s. I think the big one is that these s…

> stigmergy

This is a new word for me—thanks :-)

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#54

Post by TuringTest »

hacker_9 wrote: post #4

'Visual Programming' failed (and continues to fail) simply because it is a lie; just because you surround my textual code with boxes and draw arrows showing the 'flow of execution' does not make it visual! This core misunderstanding is why all these 'visual' tools suck and don't help anyone do anything practical (read: practical = complex systems). When I write code, for example a layout algorithm for a set of gui el…

Watch Bret Victor's videos about Learnable Programming[1], in particular Stop Drawing Dead Fish. [2] Only because visual tools in the past were limited to putting properties in boxes doesn't mean that all visual tools have to be that way.

[1] http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/

[2] https://vimeo.com/64895205

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#55

Post by hacker_9 »

TuringTest wrote: post #54
hacker_9 wrote: post #4

'Visual Programming' failed (and continues to fail) simply because it is a lie; just because you surround my textual code with boxes and draw arrows showing the 'flow of execution' does not make it visual! This core misunderstanding is why all these 'visual' tools suck and don't help anyone do anything practical (read: practical = complex systems). When I write code, for example a layout algorithm for a set of gui el…

Watch Bret Victor's videos about Learnable Programming[1], in particular Stop Drawing Dead Fish. [2] Only because visual tools in the past were limited to putting properties in boxes doesn't mean that all visual tools have to be that way. [1] http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/ [2] https://vimeo.com/64895205

I have seen it, and while Bret Victors 'research' is interesting, none of it actually scales to a practical level.

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#56

Post by mcphage »

hacker_9 wrote: post #24
jerf wrote: post #19

It is a very strange essay form to give multiple reasons why a thing has not worked very well, then end it with the conclusion that people just irrationally don't like it because your brain is just biased against it. I don't believe in it in the general case simply because I've never seen a general-purpose visual programming language work. Show me one and show me lots of people choosing it freely and I'll believe jus…

To add to this, I present to you screenshots of visual programming spaghetti code in all of it's glory [1]. [1] http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com

> screenshots of visual programming spagetti code in all of it's glory

While that serves as a reminder that visual programming isn't a cure for spaghetti code, (a) it was never claimed to be, and (b) terrible spaghetti code exists in all sufficiently powerful programming environments. I don't know that I'd enjoy tracing through that any more than untangling a mess of objects and functions that call each other—but then, I don't know that I'd "enjoy" it any less, either.

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#57

Post by hacker_9 »

fsloth wrote: post #40
hacker_9 wrote: post #4

'Visual Programming' failed (and continues to fail) simply because it is a lie; just because you surround my textual code with boxes and draw arrows showing the 'flow of execution' does not make it visual! This core misunderstanding is why all these 'visual' tools suck and don't help anyone do anything practical (read: practical = complex systems). When I write code, for example a layout algorithm for a set of gui el…

For fairly simple configuration tasks IMO visual programming is a powerful tool for non-programmer end users to actually create programs which are not prone to syntax errors, misguided loop conditions or such. It also means one does not need to learn yet another syntax. True, the application domains are limited, but for example the common node based computational graph generation done for example in Blender and other…

But at what point does simple become complex? It's all well and good saying only use it for simple tasks, but when real life complexity comes knocking, you end up with this sort of magic [1] that is far worse than any C++ I've seen in the wild.

[1] http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#58

Post by TuringTest »

fsloth wrote: post #40
hacker_9 wrote: post #4

'Visual Programming' failed (and continues to fail) simply because it is a lie; just because you surround my textual code with boxes and draw arrows showing the 'flow of execution' does not make it visual! This core misunderstanding is why all these 'visual' tools suck and don't help anyone do anything practical (read: practical = complex systems). When I write code, for example a layout algorithm for a set of gui el…

For fairly simple configuration tasks IMO visual programming is a powerful tool for non-programmer end users to actually create programs which are not prone to syntax errors, misguided loop conditions or such. It also means one does not need to learn yet another syntax. True, the application domains are limited, but for example the common node based computational graph generation done for example in Blender and other…

Visual programming excels at data wrangling (parsing structured data in an input/output pipeline that spits the same filtered data in a new format and structure).

You're right that until now its usage has been limited to domain-specific languages for automating applications. But with the emergence of functional programming in the mainstream and visual tools that follow that paradigm, I predict that soon there will be visual tools that allow quite general programming. (I've already seen working prototypes, and they deliver on most of the promises).

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#59

Post by jimbokun »

hacker_9 wrote: post #24
jerf wrote: post #19

It is a very strange essay form to give multiple reasons why a thing has not worked very well, then end it with the conclusion that people just irrationally don't like it because your brain is just biased against it. I don't believe in it in the general case simply because I've never seen a general-purpose visual programming language work. Show me one and show me lots of people choosing it freely and I'll believe jus…

To add to this, I present to you screenshots of visual programming spaghetti code in all of it's glory [1]. [1] http://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com

So one advantage of visual programming languages, spaghetti code literally looks like a plate of spaghetti!

Re: Visual Programming Is Unbelievable (2015)

#60

Post by TuringTest »

sebular wrote: post #35
pmoriarty wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another place where visual programming is popular is among music producers, with systems like Max/MSP[1] and PureData[2]. I dabbled in PureData a little, and while it seemed to be ok for simple things, I imagine that for anything even moderately complex, it would quickly become a nightmare. While visual programming paradigms seem like a nice thing at first glance, they are missing out on whole ecosystems of tools dev…

I don't know what your definition of a "moderately complex" program looks like, but I have to say that from my own dabbling with PureData I really enjoyed the way it handled the concepts of abstraction and encapsulation. It's been long enough that I've forgotten the terminology, but I remember thoroughly enjoying the process of first building a widget, then meticulously arranging all of the little boxes, color-coding…

I imagine that someday we'll see the rise of a programming metaphor that works as a hybrid of code and visual.

You're going to enjoy the Eve language...[1][2] :-)

[1] http://eve-lang.com/

[2] http://incidentalcomplexity.com/

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