Visual programming language

An implementation of a "Hello, world!" program in the Scratch programming language

In computing, a visual programming language (VPL) is any programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually.^[1]^[2] A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used either as elements of syntax or secondary notation. For example, many VPLs (known as dataflow or diagrammatic programming)^[3] are based on the idea of "boxes and arrows", where boxes or other screen objects are treated as entities, connected by arrows, lines or arcs which represent relations.

Definition

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. Dataflow languages also allow automatic parallelization, which is likely to become one of the greatest programming challenges of the future.^[4]

The "visual languages" (Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual J#, etc.) of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE are not visual programming languages. All of these languages are textual and not graphical. The MS Visual Studio is a visual programming environment, however.

Visual languages

The following contains a list of visual programming languages.

Educational

AgentSheets, easy to use game authoring and computational science authoring tool
Alice, an object based language used to program 3D environments.
App Inventor for Android, a tool for creating applications for Google Android, based on Blockly and Kawa
Bubble, a visual programming language to build production-ready web applications without code
Etoys scripting
Flowgorithm, creates executable flowcharts which can be converted to several languages.
Hopscotch, a visual programming language for mobile touchscreen devices (available on the iPad).
Kodu, a visual programming tool which builds on ideas begun with Logo
Kojo, a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) for computer programming and learning.
LARP, creates executable flowcharts, for the Windows Platform
Open Roberta online programming environment from Fraunhofer IAIS designed for kids
Raptor, creates executable flowcharts.
Scratch, a product of MIT designed for kids in K-12 and after school programs
Sketchware, an Android app to directly develop apps on your Android device.
Snap!, an extension of Scratch with first class procedures and lists which is used for teaching by UC Berkeley (browser-based reimplementation of BYOB (programming language))
Stagecast Creator, formerly Apple's Cocoa: Internet Authoring for Kids
StarLogo, an agent-based simulation language developed by Mitchel Resnick, Eric Klopfer, and others at MIT Media Lab. It is an extension of the Logo programming language, a dialect of Lisp.
ToonTalk, programming system for children
Visual Logic, creates executable flowcharts.

Multimedia

AudioMulch, an audio signal flow based sound and music creation environment
Blender (software), the open source 3D graphics package, includes a "node editor" to create shading programs as graphs. Also, custom nodes allows create systems as sverchok, blendgraph or other.
Cameleon, graphical functional language
Clickteam's The games factory/Multimedia fusion series, environments made for visually developing games
Filter Forge Node based filter generation for image processing.
Grasshopper 3d, a generative modeling interface for Rhinoceros 3D
Kyma (sound design language), a visual programming language for sound design used by musicians, researchers, and sound designers.
LiveBlox Graphics programming engine, with audio, video, computer vision that can export standalone applications
Mama (software) – a programming language and IDE for building 3D animations and games
Max (software), visual programming environment for building interactive, real-time music and multimedia applications
- Max/MSP
- Pure Data
- nato.0+55+3d
Nodal, a node-based generative programming software application for music composition
Nuke, a node-based visual programming software for visual effects compositing by The Foundry powered by Tcl, Python and Blink-script.
OpenMusic, a visual programming language for music composition (based on Common Lisp Object System (CLOS)) applications, and mobile applications
Pure Data (Pd) is a visual programming language developed for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works.
Quartz Composer, a language for processing and rendering graphical data (macOS)
Reaktor, a DSP and MIDI-processing language by Native Instruments
Scala Multimedia Authoring suite and complete multimedia system for AmigaOS and Windows
Softimage,with ICE Interactive Creative Environment.
SynthEdit, a Synthesizer construction tool using a VPL.
TouchDesigner, visual programming language for real-time multimedia content
Virtools, a middleware used to create interactive 3D experiences
WireFusion, visual programming environment for creating interactive 3D web presentations
Vsxu, music visual / real-time 3D graphics generation (Windows, GNU/Linux, and macOS)
vvvv, real-time video synthesis

Video games

Antares Universe is a visual environment/plugin to develop in Unity.
Blender Game Engine, (Graphical logic editor)
Construct 2 is an HTML5-based 2D game editor, developed by Scirra Ltd.
- Construct Classic is the previous, DirectX-based open-sourced version of Construct.^[5]^[6]
CryEngine has a node-based visual programming language called FlowGraph.
GameMaker: Studio, has a drag and drop game creation system developed by YoYo Games.
GameSalad is a visual game creation tool developed by GameSalad, Inc.
Godot, in-house open source MIT Licensed game development software made by OKAM Studio.
Human Resource Machine is a visual programming-based puzzle game developed by Tomorrow Corporation.
Kodu, a software designed to program games with a 3D Interface developed by Microsoft Research.
Stencyl, a video game creation tool.
Unity has an editor extension on the Unity Asset Store called Playmaker made by Hutong Games.
Unreal Engine 4 has a node-based visual programming language called Blueprints.

Many modern video games make use of behavior trees, which are in principle a family of simple programming languages designed to model behaviors for non-player characters. The behaviors are modeled as trees, and are often edited in graphical editors.

Systems / simulation

Analytica, commercial Microsoft Windows declarative language from 1992 to 2015.
CODE, language to compose sequential programs into parallel programs, to 2002.
EICASLAB, a software suite including a graphical language for supporting the design of control architectures
Flowcode is a graphical programming language to program embedded microprocessors
Function block diagrams, used in programmable logic controllers
KNIME, the Konstanz Information Miner, is an open source data analytics, reporting and integration platform
LabVIEW, a graphical language designed for engineers and scientists
Ladder logic, a language that simulates relay logic commonly used in programmable logic controllers
MeVisLab, cross-platform application framework for medical image processing and scientific visualization
Microsoft Visual Programming Language, dataflow language for robotics programming that is a component of Microsoft Robotics Studio
MindRover, a robot programming game incorporating a dataflow "wiring" language
Minibloq, visual programming language for robotics and Arduino compatible boards
MST Workshop, an interactive visual programming language for creating mathematical solutions, rapid prototyping, two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphic applications
NXT-G, a visual programming language for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics kit
OpenDX scientific data visualization using a visual programming language and data flow model
OpenWire - adds visual dataflow programming abilities to Delphi via Visual Component Library (VCL) components and a graphical editor (homonymous binary protocol is unrelated)
Orange - An open-source, visual programming tool for data mining, statistical data analysis, and machine learning
OutSystems language, a visual modeling language to develop and change all layers of business centric web applications
Prograph
Ptolemy
Qucs graphical interface to set up simulation of electronic circuit signal and noise behavior
Reallusion - iClone, a 3D software with LUA language and visual programing design.
ROBO Pro, a visual programming language for the fischertechnik robotics kit
Scicos A graphical language associated with the numerical analysis package ScicosLab (originally SciLab)
Simulink
Sequential function chart, a Petri-net like programming language for programmable logic controllers
STELLA, a VPL for system dynamics modeling
Softimage ICE, a node-based system that is used to create and modify 3D models, simulate particles and perform various other tasks
VEE
VisSim, modeling and simulation language, allows making mathematical models quickly and executing them in real-time
GNU Radio, a development toolkit which provides signal-processing blocks to implement software-defined-radios and signal-processing systems

Automation

Automator
CiMPLE, Visual Programming Language by ThinkLABs for teaching robotics
Flow a graphical integration language used in the webMethods platform
Pipeline Pilot is a scientific visual and dataflow programming language, and the authoring tool for the Accelrys Enterprise Platform.
PLUS+1 GUIDE, a graphical programming environment from Sauer-Danfoss typically used for off-highway machines.

Data warehousing / business intelligence

Ab Initio, a more advanced tool for ETL processing by creating graphs
Feature Manipulation Engine, an integrated collection of Spatial ETL tools for data transformation and data translation produced by Safe Software Inc.
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, is an example for front-end programs in Business Intelligence applications, which are used to generate SQL queries to run against RDBMS databases
IBM InfoSphere DataStage, an ETL tool by IBM
Informatica Powercenter is an advanced ETL tool to design mappings graphically for data load in Data Warehouse systems, by Informatica
Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), a platform for data integration and workflow applications, by Microsoft
Pentaho Data Integration (PDI), formerly named Kettle, an open-source ETL tool
Talend Open Studio for Data Integration, an open-source ETL tool

Miscellaneous

Kwikpoint, an isotype visual translator created by Alan Stillman
Lava, an experimental object oriented RAD language
Limnor, a general purpose programming system. Limnor Studio is an IDE for rapid software development.
Morphic (software), makes it easier to build and edit graphical objects by direct manipulation and from within programs; the whole Self (programming language) programming environment is built using Morphic
StreamBase Systems, StreamBase EventFlow is a visual programming language for processing streaming events
Tersus, an open source platform for the development of rich web applications by visually defining user interface, client side behavior and server side processing
TouchDevelop, programming for mobile devices
WebML, is a visual language for designing complex data-intensive Web applications that can be automatically generated
Yahoo! Pipes is a visual data-flow programming system to process web data ^[7]
YAWL, graphical workflow language

Legacy

AppWare, also known as MicroBrew, icon based programming for classic Mac OS and Microsoft Windows
Macromedia Authorware - flowchart based programming language
GRAIL, on the RAND Tablet - a flowchart based language created in the 1960's
Helix and Double Helix, a pioneering database management system for the Apple Macintosh platform, created in 1983
Illumination Software Creator, a language and IDE for visually creating desktop and mobile software
ThingLab

Visual styles

Flowchart
DRAKON (Dragon), a SDL- and AADL-influenced visual 2D programming language designed for developing the on-board hard real-time software system for automatic flight and landing of the Soviet/Russian Buran (Snowstorm) orbiting spacecraft
Executable UML, a profile of the Universal Modeling Language specification defining an executable semantics for a subset of UML
Subtext

References

↑ Graphical Programming Environments for Educational Robots: Open Roberta - Yet Another One? from the IEEE
↑ The Maturity of Visual Programming
↑ Diagrammatic-graphical programming languages and DoD-STD-2167A from the IEEE
↑ Johnston, W.M.; Hanna, J.R.P.; Millar, R.J. (2004). "Advances in dataflow programming languages" (PDF). ACM Computing Surveys. 36 (1): 1–34. doi:10.1145/1013208.1013209. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
↑ Construct Classic home page
↑ Construct Classic page on SourceForge
↑ Yahoo! pipes

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, used with permission. Update as needed.

External links

Types of programming languages
Actor-based Array Aspect-oriented Class-based Concatenative Concurrent Data-structured Dataflow Declarative Domain-specific Dynamic Esoteric Event-driven Extensible Functional Imperative Logic Macro Metaprogramming Multi-paradigm Object-based Object-oriented Pipeline Procedural Prototype-based Reflective Rule-based Scripting Synchronous Templating
Assembly Compiled Interpreted Machine
Low-level High-level Very high-level
First generation Second generation Third generation Fourth generation Fifth generation
Non-English-based Visual

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