CODEWITHSUNDEEP
computer-science
KarlsFriend
KarlsFriend

Reputation: 745

Programming without sourcecode editing

Are there or have there been serious attempts at creating a programming enviroment in which the standart form of creating a programm is not the editing of textfiles?

I remember having used lego mindstorms when i was a kid by connecting blocks. Has something similiar ever been attempted for more sophisticated users?

Do you know examples?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 180

Answers (6)

Jonathan
Jonathan

Reputation: 1508

LabVIEW is an excellent example of a Graphical Programming language. Student version gets you most of the way there.

Upvotes: 0

JL344
JL344

Reputation: 131

Two popular examples are Google blockly and Yahoo pipes.

Upvotes: 2

hatchet - done with SOverflow
hatchet - done with SOverflow

Reputation: 16257

IBM's VisualAge for Smalltalk was heading pretty far into the territory you're asking about, but I'm not sure that it fully arrived at the destination before being EOL'ed (end of lifed) by IBM. Instantiations now supports VisualAge Smalltalk.

Upvotes: 1

Stephan Eggermont
Stephan Eggermont

Reputation: 15917

Smalltalk has taught us that text files are not the right objects for creating and modifying programs. For transferring programs they are ok.

Upvotes: 1

Paul R
Paul R

Reputation: 213120

There are a number of examples of graphical programming languages, e.g. LabView's G language, and Prograph. Note that these are both data flow programming languages, for which graphical programming is a natural fit, but in theory you can also do procedural programming in a graphical context (the only example I can think of though is the Chipwits game from the 1980s).

The big problem with GUI-based programming though is that all the peripheral activities in programming such as source control, comparing files, merging, grepping, translation, analysis, utilities, etc, only work for text-based source code. Beyond the initial coding stage, it's hard to envisage how GUI-based programming could gain any traction when it comes to "real world" programming.

Upvotes: 3

Antimony
Antimony

Reputation: 39461

There are tons of examples. One off the top of my head is the GUI Script editor in Warcraft 3. Of course, such GUIs are inherently limited, so the skilled coders always bypassed it and coded directly in JASS Script.

Upvotes: 1

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