I actually found visual (iconic) programming to be very useful. I taught programming to graduate students with a limited background in English using Prograph. Graphical representations of code were picked up much faster than their equivalents in textual languages (I’d previously taught C++). My wife wrote the software for conducting the experiments of her Masters thesis and Doctoral dissertation and analyzing the data entirely in Prograph. I was impressed enough that I published a textbook about programming in Prograph.
I’m not claiming that Prograph (or visual programming as a paradigm) is perfect. There were warts (such as the display of different conditional branches or the contents of a loop in different windows). But it was a nice tool for its purposes. Even today, my wife still misses it.
I should also add that I also used LabVIEW, another visual language, for building a large system for presenting visual stimuli and collecting physiological and psychophysical responses.
Marten is not being maintained (except as needed by its author for his own professional projects). It had just been given the ability to compile for Cocoa instead of Carbon, then development slowed. If you look up the documentation on that site, you’ll see a link to download my book for free.
What if I’m more interested in creating an app rather than learning to program? If I didn’t know programming already but I could achieve everything I wanted by dragging and dropping blocks like building with Lego what would be my incentive to do anything else? Isn’t that a 4th kind of person?
Are people who drag and drop loops into a sequencer really song writers?
Do you care if an app was created visually if it does the job?
Do you care if a song was created from loops if it sounds good?
I don’t see App Inventor as a toy, I see it as a tool.
I can’t regret to see it as a tool. That was never the question. The question was if it can replace Xojo. If somebody does not want to learn programming it is more a solution than Java. If somebody needs it for professional programming with all flexibility there is the direct need of a programming language. Therefore Java for example could replace Xojo. But not that tool you showed.
Tools like this where becoming interesting and modern at the end of the 90th. It is long time ago. And there is not that much happened that I can say it replaces the programming language and the control you have from it.
These kinds of tools have a place
I dont think any one would say labview is a toy
And it has a graphical view o f processes it controls (Anyone know if it has other views of things as well ? I havent looked at it in 20 years or more)
They are again as tools for domain experts or low/no code use
MS PowerApps and several other low and no code tools for instance
OutSystems and others use graphical representations - but they are more “processes” than “line by line code” from what I can see Like these
Are they a direct replacement for Xojo ? On a line of code for line of code basis no
But could you use these to do some/all of what Xojo does ? It looks like there are possibilities
Can you use one of these do create desktop, server web ios and android apps ? No
But then you use multiple tools with a single language to do that
Alternatives exist in many forms depending on how you used xojo and what you need to do with it
Labview is still used in FIRST robotics along with Java, C, and Python. I think it really matters on what the mentors are familiar with and willing to teach these high school kids. LabView is pretty common in engineering jobs but Java and C are more commonly used. I’ve personally heard of more teams struggling with LabView than Java and C.
I don’t know what the breakdown of teams (several thousand worldwide) but I’d have to guess that Labview is less than 25% of all team.
Beeware looks VERY encouraging. Has anyone created binaries or executables that pass the requirements to be placed in the Microsoft Store or Apple Store?
