Morphic, dataflow and encapsulation

Steve Wart swart at home.com
Wed Jan 27 05:33:56 UTC 1999


I have an example of such a system, but only 4 people understand it :-)

When I develop applications, I am fortunate enough to have a choice to use a visual component
representation of things or to write code. I am easily 10 times as productive when I do this. We
have a visual report generator that is like a lambda calculus, but there are parts of the system
where it is not supported.

Like GeODE, it is GemStone-based, but it is much higher-level. I never really used GeODE, but my
impression was that it was a way to do GemStone programming without using a third-party
Smalltalk client. I do recall that there was a frame system built into it, but it did not seem
to be fundamental to the system.

I agree that it is not easier to use a tool like this. But once it is wired into your brain, you
can just think about what you want the system to do, and skip the translation into code. It may
just be that such a calculus is a higher order way of doing things than jamming code into
browsers, and a textual version of it would probably be faster yet than dragging objects around.
I am not sure if it is computationally complete, because you can always tweak it if you need to.

It may not fit a "pure" definition of what a visual programming tool needs to be. After all,
Smalltalk is pretty visual, even in its code browsers. I agree that icons without text are
pretty useless, but to expect everyone in the world to program using a keyboard makes about as
much sense as expecting everybody to switch their calls using a 1930's-era telephone
switchboard. Could you make a better text-based system in Smalltalk that used a DOS prompt for a
user interface?

Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralph E. Johnson [mailto:johnson at cs.uiuc.edu]
> Sent: January 25, 1999 12:20 PM
>
> You have it backward.  People have been saying for decades that
> visual representations for programs are essential.  The proponents
> of VPLs and CASE tools make similar arguments.  UML is the latest
> example.  However, there is NOT ONE EXAMPLE of a system that delivers
> on its promises.  Very specialized systems like Stella or GUI builders
> are certainly useful, and general purpose systems like LabView are
> good for non programmers.  AVL is a nice system, but it has problems,
> and I bet I could make a better system in Smalltalk that was text-based.
> Andy's point was that, as a programmer, he had yet to find a system that
> was as fast and powerful for him as textual programming.
>bandoned the visual builder.
>
> This does NOT mean that it is impossible to make a great visual
> representation of programs.  It just means that it is hard, and
> people have a right to be skeptical.  The arguments in favor of
> graphics are very logical, but experience indicates that there is
> something wrong with the conclusion.  The burden of proof is on
> the proponents.
>
> -Ralph
>
>
>





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