Programming Languages

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This is the current Lemmy equivalent of https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/.

The content and rules are the same here as they are over there. Taken directly from the /r/ProgrammingLanguages overview:

This community is dedicated to the theory, design and implementation of programming languages.

Be nice to each other. Flame wars and rants are not welcomed. Please also put some effort into your post.

This isn't the right place to ask questions such as "What language should I use for X", "what language should I learn", and "what's your favorite language". Such questions should be posted in /c/learn_programming or /c/programming.

This is the right place for posts like the following:

"Check out this new language I've been working on!"
"Here's a blog post on how I implemented static type checking into this compiler"
"I want to write a compiler, where do I start?"
"How does the Java compiler work? How does it handle forward declarations/imports/targeting multiple platforms/?"
"How should I test my compiler? How are other compilers and interpreters like gcc, Java, and python tested?"
"What are the pros/cons of ?"
"Compare and contrast vs. "
"Confused about the semantics of this language"
"Proceedings from PLDI / OOPSLA / ICFP / "

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We need visual programming. No, not like that. (blog.sbensu.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Most visual programming environments fail to get any usage. Why? They try to replace code syntax and business logic but developers never try to visualize that. Instead, developers visualize state transitions, memory layouts, or network requests.

In my opinion, those working on visual programming would be more likely to succeed if they started with aspects of software that developers already visualize.

...

Developers say they want "visual programming", which makes you think "oh, let's replace if and for". But nobody ever made a flow chart to read for (i in 0..10) if even?(i) print(i). Developers familiar with code already like and understand textual representations to read and write business logic^2^.

Let's observe what developers do, not what they say.

Developers do spend the time to visualize aspects of their code but rarely the logic itself. They visualize other aspects of their software that are important, implicit, and hard to understand.

Here are some visualizations that I encounter often in serious contexts of use:

Various ways to visualize the codebase overall.

Diagrams that show how computers are connected in a network

Diagrams that show how data is laid out in memory

Transition diagrams for state machines.

Swimlane diagrams for request / response protocols.

This is the visual programming developers are asking for. Developers need help with those problems and they resort to visuals to tackle them.

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[–] Gonzako 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

tbh, the only place I can do visual programming is on shader graphs because you get to see the results faster

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I think it's just that the variables there are both highly structured and very complex.

Statistics and data science could probably use it as well, never tried it myself though.

Not for the data cleaning part though. I don't know if anyone is willing to debug JSON monstrosities like that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ooh that's a thought. As someone with aphantasia, the concept of visualizing programming is absolutely foreign to me. I should ask my colleagues what they visualize.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Aphantasia is the inability to visualize.

Interesting.

Wikipedia

For some things I definitely spatially lay out elements to put them into relation. I also visualize UI when thinking about it.

When I think of code hierarchies and relations, I wonder if it always ends up spatially or if sometimes I skip/omit that visualization, and if and what difference that makes. 🤔 I guess when it's complex enough, I skip the obvious intuition and visualize to find understanding.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The best implementation of this that I have seen has been Frends Integration platform (https://frends.com). We use it at work, and have implemented ~500 business and integration processes with it.

This kind of visual programming works well in close to business logic implementations, were it is important to be able to quickly understand the business need behind the process.

How Frends work on the background, it compiles the visual process to C# code, so it is actually quite fast. Many solutions interpreters the process flow while executing, which makes them much slower.

My background is in normal code development, and I still think that there is a place for that. I have always hated having the raw business process in code, because those tend to change, and reimplementing code because process changes, is always really annoying.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Basically, we need to transform the visual element of Factorio into some sort of code

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I develop this interactive climate-system model in scala.js - instead of standard tests, after each code change i just look at the circle of plots and see all look and behave (react to adjustable parameters) as i expect - the rotating cogs are also clues as to what recalculated and how long it took, and link to relevant code. Such development is a very visual process, although still much to improve.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Only good use I've ever seen of visual programming is for stuff with minimal control flow, usually stuff that runs in parallel (i.e. shaders and blender's geometry nodes)