I recall having used two visual programming tools. Neither experience was positive. There was a graphics package through which I was to connect the outputs to inputs of various functions to transform data into beautiful useful picture. I could connect a red output to a red input, and generate a blue output for the blue input. I was able to make it work but the reality was there seemed to be many more possible ways to connect the routines than there were data flow graphs that actually made sense. I think the product was from IBM and within 5 years I'll call it 1992. Did I use it enough to become fluent? No. The other was LabVIEW which was a whole lot of fun but terribly cumbersome. After visually programming equations for a few days we realized that LabVIEW could evaluate typed algebraic expressions.
-----------context----------- Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 19:01:01 -0500 From: Dan Bron <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Programming Literacy - gaps Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 The other rabbit hole this led me down, though it was less mind-blowing than the video I just posted, is relevant to my line of work, and I'd like to get some of your (Forum members') thoughts on it. Here's the quote that caught my eye: Note that neither spreadsheets, nor Victor's examples, attempt to hide logic creation behind a point-and-click interface. Purely visual programming is a red herring, and history is littered with the corpses of products that have attempted to offer programming without code. --------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
