The effort to mentally parse such a complex picture is often far harder than reading the equivalent text. If you do this it soon becomes apparent that a single line of code often maps to several boxes and since it’s not untypical for even a simple program to contain hundreds of lines of code, this translates into hundreds or even thousands of graphical elements. I expect this misconception comes from a failure to actually read a typical program written in a standard textual programming language and imagine it transformed into graphical elements of boxes and arrows. The idea is that programming is actually quite simple and if we could only present it in a clear graphical format it would dramatically lower the learning curve and mental effort required to create and read software. The popularity of Scratch among educationalists plays to this misconception. The first misconception holds that software development has significant barriers to entry because textual programming languages obfuscate the true nature of programming. The tools that have been developed to support programming are unimportant.Abstraction and decoupling play a small and peripheral part in programming.Textual programming languages obfuscate what is essentially a simple process.This is fundamentally attributable to the following misconceptions about programming: So visual programming has failed to catch on, except in some very limited domains. These tools failed to deliver on their promises and most of these attempts have now been largely abandoned. This involved the concept of ‘round tripping’, where a system could be modelled visually, the program code would be generated from the models, and any changes to the code could be pushed back to the model. There was a very popular movement in the 1990’s to bring these kinds of tools into the enterprise with so called CASE tools, where enterprise systems could be defined with UML and generated without the need for trained software developers.
The advantages given are that they make programming more accessible to novices and non-programmers. A well known example is Scratch, a visual programming language from MIT that’s used to teach children.
I’ve added an update section to the end of this post to address some of the main criticisms.Ī visual programming language is one that allows the programmer to create programs by manipulating graphical elements rather than typing textual commands. This post had a great response on Reddit with over 300 comments.
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