Graphical Programming Environments (was: ANNOUNCE: Release of Vit al, an interactive visual programming environment for Haskell)
I've sometimes thought that a functional language would be the ideal platform to usher in a purely graphical style of programming;
I don't understand why so many people talk about graphical programming, i.e. putting together functions, arguments, definitins etc. with the mouse instead of the keyboard, drawing arrows instead of naming etc.
No wonder it didn't succeed. It would be much less convenient than typing text and less readable too.
That's not necessarily correct. If 'graphical' isn't taken too literally, you can think of a dialog per function with the possibility to specify pre and post conditions, tests, comments, etc. Then it would be possible to view only things your are interested in: default code, exception handling, interfaces, ... without cluttering the screen with 'code of no interest'. I agree that putting together programs just by click and point would be tedious. But _viewing_ programs this way could be advantagous. What do you think? Best wishes, Markus
W liście z czw, 13-11-2003, godz. 10:34, Markus.Schnell@infineon.com pisze:
If 'graphical' isn't taken too literally, you can think of a dialog per function with the possibility to specify pre and post conditions, tests, comments, etc.
I still doubt it would be more convenient. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to be able to scroll across many function bodies which are grouped and ordered manually, to using a Smalltalk browser where I must click to expand everything and the grouping is dictated by classes the functions operate on and by the environment. An additional "overview" browser showing just headers for quickly locating functions is fine, as long as it doesn't take away the ability to view all the information with minimal navigation (only scrolling) and the ability to use standard text tools on the source (e.g. grep, diff, perl). -- __("< Marcin Kowalczyk \__/ qrczak@knm.org.pl ^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/
I love religious wars. Having been around awhile, I make a prediction. This will thrash a while, those who like graphical environments will make their points, those who like textual environments will make their points, no one will convince anyone else, and eventually it will die down. In fact (in my opinion), people operate differently. Some operate better graphically, some operate better textually, and I'm glad both tools are available. Me, I'm a text person, but I know folks who think better in pictures, bless 'em. Let the games begin. Dave Barton EDAptive Computing
participants (3)
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David Barton -
Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk -
Markus.Schnell＠infineon.com