Visual programming language

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Visual programming language (VPL) is any programming language that lets users specify programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually. A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols. Most VPLs are based on the idea of "boxes and arrows," that is, boxes or circles or bubbles, treated as screen objects, connected by arrows, lines or arcs. Non Visual Programming languages are completely based on text, when using non VPL applications it is impossible to see images until the program is run. This is a disadvantage to programmers as the user is unable to see the results of their coding unless the program is run.

VPLs may be further classified, according to the type and extent of visual expression used, into icon-based languages, form-based languages, and diagram languages. Visual programming environments provide graphical or iconic elements which can be manipulated by users in an interactive way according to some specific spatial grammar for program construction.

A visually transformed language is a non-visual language with a superimposed visual representation. Naturally visual languages have an inherent visual expression for which there is no obvious textual equivalent.

Current developments try to integrate the visual programming approach with dataflow languages to either have immediate access to the program state resulting in online debugging (i.e. LabVIEW) or automatic program generation and documentation (i.e. visual paradigm). Dataflow languages also allow automatic parallelization, which is likely to become one of the greatest programming challenges of the future.

[edit] Visual languages

actor-lab, a parallel, object-orientated control language designed to introduce the ideas of control technology and robotics.
AgentSheets, easy to use game authoring and computational science authoring tool
Alice (software)
Analytica
Automator
Behave!, part of the Virtual Fishtank at the Boston Computer Museum at [1]
CDL (Concurrent Description Language), a machine-translatable, composable, object-oriented, visual programming language.
Circuit maker
CODE
Some Dataflow languages
EyesWeb
Fabrik
Flow, a commercial visual programming language from webMethods Inc.
Flow-based programming
Graphic-Calculus, an experimental formulation of lambda calculus in terms of three-dimensional cubes
GraphicalAccess, a shareware visual programming add-in for MS Visio, which diagrams and allows visual programming of MS Access databases.GraphicalAccess
Grape - a graphical programming environment used for qfix robots
Hyperpascal
LabVIEW
Ladder logic, a programming language that simulates relay logic commonly used in Programmable logic controllers
Lava
Limnor
Max/MSP
Mindscript - software visualization and development environment
Microsoft Visual Programming Language - a dataflow language for Robotics programming that is a component of Microsoft Robotics Studio
OutSystems Service Studio, a commercial visual programming environment from OutSystems
Pict
Prograph
Proto Financial, a commercial flow based visual programming language from Proto Software, Inc.
Pure Data
Quartz Composer
Quest3D
SCADE
Simulink
Spreadsheets
Squeak eToys scripting
Stagecast Creator, formerly Apple's Cocoa
Subtext
Tersus - an open source, visual programming platform, that uses flow digrams instead of code.
ThingLab
Tinkertoy
VEE
VisSim
VisualKii, a platform-independent visual programming software supporting many new technologies.
Visula - free, open source, dynamically typed and object-oriented.
V+ - A real-time visual programming system for simulation.
VVVV

Note: Microsoft Visual Studio and the languages it encompasses (Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual J#, etc.) are commonly confused to be but are not visual programming languages. All of these languages are textual and not graphical.