What would the United States Code look like as some painting or interpretive dance?
Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
61–70 of 325 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#62I think the reason is that text is already a highly optimized visual way to represent information. It started with cave paintings and evolved to what it is now. "Please go to the supermarket and get two bottles of beer. If you see Joe, tell him we are having a party in my house at 6 tomorrow." It took me a few seconds to write that. Imagine I had to paint it.
Even harder with pictures, searching and, sharing, and refactoring:
"Joe has been way too busy yesterday. What did you ask him to do in the last week?"
"Yeah, that's too much. Just ask Jessica to do the emails going out next week."
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#63I 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. * https://www.emaze.com/@AWOCZQLL/Text-is-for-Novels
That's the claim, but where's the evidence? Is there any implementation that can show us that?
It will come. Nothing today. The leap that needs to be made is actually in the data structures themselves but I understand your skepticism until it arrives.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#64I think this is a minority perspective, but I generally think coding has a lot more in common with writing than it does with engineering. (I guess Literate Programming would sort of support this idea). Can you imagine trying to write an essay as a flowchart? I think it would just obscure the point, rather than simplify it.
Structurally, a program is also similar to music. A program, if we view the bytecode, is read linearly by default but may have jumps at certain points forwards or backwards, like a coda in musical notation.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#65I've been working on a project that does exactly what you described for the last few years. IMHO vue.js/react really changed the game here, especially for CRUD apps. For example what I did was to code a server part in golang and use vue.js on the frontend and for the app builder. Using the web-based app builder (also 100% vue) the user can design forms. The forms are stored as serialized JSON in the database and the…
I think if drag and drop builders find an audience it will be in a sweet spot between engineers and clients, maybe used by support engineers or customer success to build and modify applications to client specifications. Technical users will always want more control and in my experience clients are happy to pay for someone else to do the work, even with DND (I've worked at two companies that have built DND form/app builders, neither caught on much with clients).
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#66I've been working on a project that does exactly what you described for the last few years. IMHO vue.js/react really changed the game here, especially for CRUD apps. For example what I did was to code a server part in golang and use vue.js on the frontend and for the app builder. Using the web-based app builder (also 100% vue) the user can design forms. The forms are stored as serialized JSON in the database and the…
> I think that drag-n-drop builders are definitely coming and will probably eliminate the need to write such apps in coming years.
I'm honestly more concerned with maintenance costs more than building costs. In my experience the cost of the alpha release goes down with visual editing, but the cost of subsequent releases ramps up over time.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#67I think the reason is that text is already a highly optimized visual way to represent information. It started with cave paintings and evolved to what it is now. "Please go to the supermarket and get two bottles of beer. If you see Joe, tell him we are having a party in my house at 6 tomorrow." It took me a few seconds to write that. Imagine I had to paint it.
So do you use text files for storage or a database? Is your company's accounting system in Word or Oracle?
Are programs text, like a novel, or is it data? And to find out, would you query Moby Dick? Not really -- at least that's not how it's meant to be consumed. You read it from beginning to end.
Would you read your program from beginning to end or would you query it? You query it, exclusively. I submit that programs are data, not text, and visual programming then becomes like data visualization. Text is holding us back.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#68Picture says it all: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Labview-Spaghetti :)
i program in labview daily, and it's always a little disappointing to see this same dumb picture posted all the time in reference to labview and visual programming. NO respectable labview programmer would work like that. you could make the same argument for text-based languages as well, as i have seen some atrociously formatted code in addition to poorly structured code.
one of the main issues with labview is that people simply don't take it seriously as a programming language. if people watched how i work everyday, i work just the same as, if not more efficient than, a good text-based programmer.
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#69I think the reason is that text is already a highly optimized visual way to represent information. It started with cave paintings and evolved to what it is now. "Please go to the supermarket and get two bottles of beer. If you see Joe, tell him we are having a party in my house at 6 tomorrow." It took me a few seconds to write that. Imagine I had to paint it.
So do you use text files for storage or a database? Is your company's accounting system in Word or Oracle? Are programs text, like a novel, or is it data? And to find out, would you query Moby Dick? Not really -- at least that's not how it's meant to be consumed. You read it from beginning to end. Would you read your program from beginning to end or would you query it? You query it, exclusively. I submit that program…
Right, code is data. But the interface to write and modify that data is text.
Consider, how long does it take you to draw an infographic representing the percentage of the United States that has a college education? How long does it take to modify it when you realise it is a mistake
Now how long does it take you to represent/change that data with text?
Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?
#70I've been working on a project that does exactly what you described for the last few years. IMHO vue.js/react really changed the game here, especially for CRUD apps. For example what I did was to code a server part in golang and use vue.js on the frontend and for the app builder. Using the web-based app builder (also 100% vue) the user can design forms. The forms are stored as serialized JSON in the database and the…
I think if drag and drop builders find an audience it will be in a sweet spot between engineers and clients, maybe used by support engineers or customer success to build and modify applications to client specifications. Technical users will always want more control and in my experience clients are happy to pay for someone else to do the work, even with DND (I've worked at two companies that have built DND form/app bu…
I absolutely agree.
That's why I don't target primarily developers, but the end-users of such apps. Of course knowing Javascript wouldn't hurt, because it opens a lot of more possibilities to further extend the entire app, but my idea was to make it possible even for non-developers to create apps for CRM, invoicing, accounting or inventory management for their needs. So in my case it's not really visual programming, but a drag-n-drop builder, which also has an integrated code editor in case the user needs it: if they know SQL, awesome - write a custom SQL and it is automatically mapped and available in the forms.
This sweet spot that you talk about between ease of use & flexibility is definitely key.