Programming Languages

1142 readers

1 users here now

Hello!

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 / "

See /r/ProgrammingLanguages for specific examples

Related online communities

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

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

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.