What is next?

Harvey L Wright

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 ...

Duncan Edwards Jones

You should check out the macro editor for Project Spark (Xbox game) - it is exactly what you describe.

Frank Alviani

Mac DB from the 80s - Double Helix II. Been there, done that. I was one of the authors.

According to my calculations, I should be able to retire about 5 years after I die.

PIEBALDconsult

Probably not the best forum. You remind me of a concept whose name I can never remember -- something like "rational programming" -- that ultimately falls down because it fails to take human nature into account. The main shortcoming is that some developers (me, for example) don't always use good meaningful names for things. The second shortcoming was that, although applications could be written with high-level constructs, someone still had to write those constructs in a lower-level language -- and provide meaningful names and reasonable interfaces. In fact, a few years back I spent a year having to develop applications in a rule-based environment that was like that. X| Edit: And SSIS is kinda like that too. X| X| X|

Dave Kreskowiak

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 Kreskowiak

PIEBALDconsult

Dave Kreskowiak wrote:

a large business application using a language like that?

Oh, I don't know... MULTIPLY Quantity BY UnitPrice YIELDING LineItemCost seems familiar. :doh:

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 Kreskowiak

Frank Alviani

That 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.

mikepwilson

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.

Marc Clifton

Dave 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

mikepwilson

Remember 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.

Vark111

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.

PhilLenoir

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.

Dave Kreskowiak

Salesforce is popular because of its data tracking abilities, not its programming language.

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Dave Kreskowiak

Bernhard Hiller

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?

den2k88

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.

Gary R Wheeler

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: delete this;

Lost User

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

PIEBALDconsult

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Coolio_Niato/light-bot[^]