Picture says it all: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Labview-Spaghetti :)
Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
11–20 of 325 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#12Because it's not optimal for programming. It's however great for scripting.
If you are a good enough programmer you want the power of ex regular expressions and you can solve almost any problem out there.
If you aren't you aren't much better off as you still need to learn how to program.
As a scripting language however it can be great because you can be much more opinionated about what should be prioritized.
What would be much more interesting and useful IMO was if normal languages created a visual environment akin to the visual programming languages we see sometimes.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#13Graydon Hoare (Rust creator) has an interesting post on a related matter "always bet on text"
http://graydon.livejournal.com/196162.html
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#14One modern incarnation of visual programming is called "low code", and it seems pretty successful. This is a good introduction and discussion about whether this is a fad or it's here to stay: https://medium.com/softwareimprovementgroup/low-code-wave-of...
Looking at the website [0], this is a joke right? Flashy marketing business speak sales site with charts, but what does the product look like?
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#15I'd like to share some thoughts:
- Visual programming tools usually only work at one abstraction level (your first point)
- Often centered around a gimmick and cannot encode "normal" detail-oriented imperative code efficiently
- Only a fraction of a given program is amenable to flow charts, Visual Basic-style forms, etc. Unfortunately, most visual programming environments are all-encompassing.
- So VPs tend to become blunt, awkward tools that lack power of expression, ergonomic editors, scalability to real usecases, etc.
FWIW, I do believe that a better code editor is possible through non-plaintext programming. (Serialize token trees and ASTs, instead of plaintext.) But such an editor would likely be used in text-editor-mode >50% of the time, just due to the high information content and sheer readability of text.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#16I disagree with several here: The problem is that we still program in text, and that's deeply sub-optimal.* Once we move to programming in data, visual programming becomes both natural and intuitive, much like data visualization.
In other words, VP itself is a red herring. The leap that needs to first to be made is that from text to data.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#17I don't think it is the paradigm that sucks but the existing implementations...it is a hard design problem to solve. No one has quite figured out the right approach....often the existing implementations make you click and fill out enough fields to make the entire exercise much worse than just coding something up in a text editor.
I believe the solution lies in coming up with a way to compose pre-built components into complete applications...I think the existing efforts involving Angular,React,VueJS,Vaadin..etc are all pointing in the right direction....I have been working on Solvent (www.crudzilla.com) for sometime now and solving the UI building (drag-drop) is something that I am still actively thinking about...one of these days someone will crack the problem :)
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#18Imagine a world where people only bought bespoke suits. You go to a tailor and are measured and pick out your fabric and wait a few weeks. Then you pick up your suit. It's perfect. You pay $5000 and take it home.
Most of us don't do that. Most of us make due with off the rack suits with some tailoring for 1/10th the price.
With programming we have an expectation of bespoke design, so anything less, even if it's much easier, seems lame.
A potentially useful reframing of the question is, "What are all the common use cases that could be solved sufficiently with significantly less effort using visual programming?"
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#19Picture says it all: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Labview-Spaghetti :)
See also: the mighty spreadsheet.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#20The way people have implemented visual programming has turned out to be a bit of an oxymoron. Visual and symbolic are entirely different channels of representation & understanding (for the most part). Representing a program using lines of code and throwing some "visual magic" to spread out lines of code across a screen doesn't take advantage of what EITHER visual or symbolic manipulation has to offer.
Visual programming efforts have tried to visualize code and operate at the wrong abstraction. Programming is just the act of creating programs. In a visual programming environment, the author / programmer should use visual interactions to "write the program". This means a few things needs to be considered:
- the representation - how is a computer program represented? how is state represented? - direct manipulation - imagine using a tool like Photoshop having to compile / build to see your changes between every edit. - input devices - mouse / keyboard works for writing lines of code. Touchscreen is a better input device / interface for visual programming but still lacking (no tactile response).
In my opinion, not enough is reinvented when visual programming efforts are tried. I think the entire stack (human input --> program state) needs to be reinvented and reconsidered. Bret Victor has a great section on visual program in his FAQ for one of his talks - http://worrydream.com/DrawingDynamicVisualizationsTalkAddend...