Visual programming language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes.
Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (April 2007)

A 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.

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 programming languages to either have immediate access to the program state resulting in online debugging 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 (see Johnston, W.M.; Hanna, J.R.P. and Millar, R.J. (2004). "Advances in dataflow programming languages". ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 36 (1): 1-34. ).

[edit] Visual languages

AgentSheets, easy to use game authoring and computational science authoring tool
Alice
Amiga Vision, multimedia authoring tool released by Commodore with Amiga A3000
Analytica
Automator
Baltie
CanDO multimedia authoring and application building tool for AmigaOS
CODE
DRAKON, a language designed for developing the Soviet Buran (spacecraft)
Flow
G, the language used in the LabVIEW development environment
GRAIL, 1969 language by RAND
Hollywood Designer application building tool for AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS
jMax, a visual programming environment for building interactive, real-time music and multimedia applications.
LabVIEW
Ladder logic, a language that simulates relay logic commonly used in Programmable logic controllers
Lava
Lily, browser based visual programming environment
Limnor
Max/MSP
Microsoft Visual Programming Language, dataflow language for Robotics programming that is a component of Microsoft Robotics Studio
Mindscript[1], easy to use and understand multiple-purpose visual programming language
MotoHawk[2], a graphical language based on SimuLink for developing prototype and production embedded control systems
MST Workshop, an interactive visual programming language for creating mathematical solutions, rapid prototyping, two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphic applications.
nato.0+55+3d
OpenDX scientific data visualization using a visual programming language and data flow model.
OpenMusic, a visual programming language for music composition (based on CLOS)
O-Zone, The Object Zone [3] multiview, activex based system
Pipeline Pilot
Prograph
Ptolemy
Pure Data
Quartz Composer
SCADE
Scala Multimedia Authoring suite and complete multimedia system for AmigaOS and Windows
Simulink
Built on Squeak
- Etoys scripting
- Scratch
Stagecast Creator, formerly Apple's Cocoa
Subtext
SynthMaker, an audio programming tool using a visual programming language
Tersus
ThingLab
ToonTalk
Turtle Art, a turtle graphics language for children on the OLPC XO-1
VEE
VisSim
virtools
WireFusion, a visual programming environment for creating interactive 3D web presentations.
vvvv
XEE, a visual data processing language for ETL tasks
Xpresso, an internal visual scripting language

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. MS Visual Studio is a visual programming environment, but not a visual programming language hence the confusion.