What is next?
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So whose going to write the code behind those little symbols and in what language? No, it's not going to be the next big thing. It'll be a niche market. Seriously, can you imaging "writing" a large business application using a language like that?
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Dave KreskowiakDave Kreskowiak wrote:
a large business application using a language like that?
Oh, I don't know...
MULTIPLY Quantity BY UnitPrice YIELDING LineItemCostseems familiar. :doh: -
Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
a large business application using a language like that?
Oh, I don't know...
MULTIPLY Quantity BY UnitPrice YIELDING LineItemCostseems familiar. :doh:I was referring to more of the graphic image of drag and drop code taking up a ton of space on screen instead of the more compact text version.
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Dave Kreskowiak -
I was referring to more of the graphic image of drag and drop code taking up a ton of space on screen instead of the more compact text version.
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Dave KreskowiakThat seems to be the universal reason why text still is dominant. It is difficult (at best) to build an environment that at least encourages breaking algorithms into small pieces so as to be easy to manipulate. Also, it is desirable to be able to arrange graphics to avoid crossing lines - which is a fiendish problem in the general case.
According to my calculations, I should be able to retire about 5 years after I die.
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The next big thing will be drag n drop language. You build the language using old flowchart symbols that you build your skeliton with then just add the properties. Nice and simple ...
Nope. They try this every few years and it never works out. The problem is that all of the stuff that can be "drag and dropped" equate to simple libraries. Programming is all about the customization work.
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So whose going to write the code behind those little symbols and in what language? No, it's not going to be the next big thing. It'll be a niche market. Seriously, can you imaging "writing" a large business application using a language like that?
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave KreskowiakDave Kreskowiak wrote:
Seriously, can you imaging "writing" a large business application using a language like that?
I actually think that would be fantastic. Obviously, it has "real code" in the background, but why not build a business app (of any scale) with a visual way of wiring together modular components, custom behaviors, etc.? But even that, in my thinking is "old school" - which is why I'm so fascinated by what the potential applications are for the open source project I'm working on in my spare time (see sig.) Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming
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So whose going to write the code behind those little symbols and in what language? No, it's not going to be the next big thing. It'll be a niche market. Seriously, can you imaging "writing" a large business application using a language like that?
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave KreskowiakRemember the "3rd Generation Languages" from the 90s? SqlWindows,PowerBuilder, etc? They took a reasonable stab at doing exactly this. But they always ran up against exactly what you're talking about. It turns out that the hard part is the hard part and that's actually what we do.
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So whose going to write the code behind those little symbols and in what language? No, it's not going to be the next big thing. It'll be a niche market. Seriously, can you imaging "writing" a large business application using a language like that?
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave Kreskowiak -
The next big thing will be drag n drop language. You build the language using old flowchart symbols that you build your skeliton with then just add the properties. Nice and simple ...
Sounds like JSD to me (followed by a JSD to COBOL translator). That's the second time this week I've referred to COBOL - I think I'll go lay down.
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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Salesforce (which I have the dubious honor of having worked in the past week) is rather close to this. It's not so much drag-and-drop as it is click-and-click, but the point still stands. And they have an absolutely massive user base.
Salesforce is popular because of its data tracking abilities, not its programming language.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave Kreskowiak -
The next big thing will be drag n drop language. You build the language using old flowchart symbols that you build your skeliton with then just add the properties. Nice and simple ...
You describe WF (Workflow Foundation), don't you? Just another "programming language" for people who do not know programming - like Cobol, Mumps etc. And guess who will have to write all the programs in that language?
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The next big thing will be drag n drop language. You build the language using old flowchart symbols that you build your skeliton with then just add the properties. Nice and simple ...
It's called Simulink but there are tons of others. It is a widely used paradigm in embedded designs that must be precisely documented AND thoroughly tested, as in ISO26262 for automotive applications for example. It has some advantages: + The "code" is always documented because it doesn't exist - there is only the model and the model is self-explaining (almost). + The model is platform independent, it depends only on a formal description of the environment on which it will run and a set of standards as AutoSAR to be deployed. + It is usable by designers specialized in other fields, experts of the domain, keeping an underlying code widely tested and homogeneous, requiring little developer/sysadmin assistance. The drawbacks of course are that someone still codes the model->code translator, set the standards, revise the standards, correct bigs which now can span on zillions of platforms. Also, if you look at the code produced you can see horrible things, as Discrete Integrations used in place of a simple counter and check and so on - if you need performances you are done for.
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The next big thing will be drag n drop language. You build the language using old flowchart symbols that you build your skeliton with then just add the properties. Nice and simple ...
IBM tried this - it was called VisualAge[^]. It used a pictorial representation of programming elements. Lines connecting the elements represented relationships, like assignments and events. It all sounded so very cool. Until you discovered that VisualAge gave you no way to document what you were doing: no comments. Until you discovered that any significant task resulted in dozens of boxes connected by hundreds of lines in an incomprehensible mess. Until you discovered that VisualAge applications were glacially slow to start up and to run. Until you discovered that VisualAge stored your project in a data base, and it routinely corrupted that data base destroying your entire project. We got into the habit of copying the data base before any significant change. In some cases, the corruption was silent, and would not crash the project until later. You would have to backtrack to find the last truly "working" version. At one time, the VisualAge team was #1 on my list of development-teams-put-against-the-wall-when-the-revolution-comes.
Software Zen:
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The next big thing will be drag n drop language. You build the language using old flowchart symbols that you build your skeliton with then just add the properties. Nice and simple ...
Scratch and about a billion other teach-kids-to-program appreciation use this paradigm - and it is becoming more popular to learn. And things like it have been around for a long time. Perhaps someone will eventually 'get it right' - I notice that there's a new Minecraft modding system allowing you to mod minecraft in Javascript, using either drag and drop or hand-writing code; If it allows one to customise code, it may be the beginnings of something - but I think we might be a few years away. Then we'll all just continue what we're doing now, except there will be a lot more images posted in Q&A :)
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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The next big thing will be drag n drop language. You build the language using old flowchart symbols that you build your skeliton with then just add the properties. Nice and simple ...