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Ask HN: Is anyone using a visual programming language?

3 points by paloaltokid ↗ HN
Lately I've become very interested in visual programming languages. Has anyone had any experience writing applications in a visual language? If so, what did you think of the experience? What different kinds of challenges come up?

2 comments

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PaulHoule
Scratch is 100% a success in the sense of being fun and educational.

Visual languages like LabView were a big deal in experimental physics when I was a grad student in the 1990s. Many data analysts do work with tools like KNIME and Alteryx and from time to time they've handed a model off to me which I would package up so it could be built into a client or server application.

Way back in the day I worked for a web development shop that had a language called Tango that would let you define the logic of a web application by snapping blocks together, and then you edit web termplates in a side window.

Tango may have compared favorably with ColdFusion, plain PHP and other tools from its time but it lacked the model-view-controller, model based kind of thinking that came in with Ruby on Rails...

stray
That's a subject I find interesting. Successes are rare though.

LabView is nice. Yahoo pipes was pretty cool.

Neither is a general purpose programming language.

The Russian space agency had a visual programming language called Drakon -- obviously I never used it. Looks interesting.

I've been tinkering on my own for a while. It will also be unsuccessful more than likely (but I don't care -- still interesting).