Representation Design Benchmarks: A Design-Time Aid for VPL Navigable Static Representations

This paper presents a new programming language named SPARCL that has four major elements: it is a visual language, it is a logic programming language, it relies on sets to organize data, and it supports partitioning constraints on the contents of sets. It is a visual programming language in that the representation of the language depends extensively on non-textual graphics and the programming process relies on graphical manipulation of this representation. It is a logic programming language in that the underlying semantics of the language is the resolution of clauses of a Horn-like subset of first order predicate logic. It uses sets as the only method of combining terms to build complex terms. Finally, one may constrain a set's structure by specifying a partitioning into pairwise disjoint subsets.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

: A general purpose visual programming language, based on object-oriented methodology, offers substantial Benefits of reusable code, shorter creation and maintenance time, faster overall understanding of the code, and reduced staff learning time. It should be an ideal fit for sites with long-lived code or very large bodies of code. The value of visual programming languages is well understood for very specific tasks; this report reviews the plan for research and design of a general purpose visual object-oriented programming language through nine steps, which includes general specifications for the preferred language and environment.

Visual programming language research has evolved greatly since its early days. At first, attempts at visual programming mostly took the form of flowchart-like diagrams. But in recent years, a wide number of innovative approaches have been incorporated into visual languages, including object-oriented programming, form-based programming, programming by demonstration, and dataflow programming. Unfortunately, while many of these systems represent important ideas, only a few have been successful as complete visual programming languages. This tutorial explains why this is true, and describes ways in which the problem can be addressed. This tutorial explores the issues behind the successes and failures of earlier approaches from a design perspective. It identifies characteristics of successful visual programming languages, and explains how to design an object-oriented language that maintains those characteristics. It shows solutions to a number of problems by looking at existing visual programming languages, including Prograph.

Managing the graphical complexity of real-life programs expressed in visual programming languages is a great challenge in each visual programming environment. Besides general methods like displaying/layouting graphs and icons on different levels of abstraction or organizing multiple window environments, built-in language mechanisms which permit the structured and modular design of visual programs are essential to overcome this problem. We address these problems by discussing a concept for visual modules in a diagrammatic parallel language as well as a method to describe massive parallel programs consisting of hundreds of processes by means of a visual replication mechanism. >

CombiLog is a logic programming language that uses a small set of basic operators to build larger structures. Although the programs are built strictly through composition, the resulting code is often difficult to read and understand. Empirical studies on program creation both with visual programming language and traditional programming indicate that visual approaches may outperform traditional approaches to programming. Thus, CombiLog could gain largely from a visual interface to support the development process. With a visual interface the resulting system can be regarded as a declarative visual logic programming language, ViColl.

Digital nations have become dependent on computer applications. One of the most important part of literacy in today’s digital and connected word are the basics of computer applications development and usage, but also algorithmic thinking. Programmers, developers, analysts are very wanted resource in business, administration and educational organizations. Job portals contain a lot of well-paid job offers for developers, data scientists, knowledge engineers or robotic process automation developers. Still more and more specialists in these areas are needed not only by IT market but also other sectors of the economy. Therefore, schools and universities introduce many courses concerning process modeling, developing, programming and customizing applications used in management, finance, logistics or engineering. Programming seems to be quite difficult to learn, therefore several educational programming environments and the new easier languages like visual programming languages were developed, so that more people, not necessarily specialists, could create new IT tools and speed up development of the information society.The aim of the article is to present the role of visual programming languages like Scratch in encouraging university students to create algorithms and start programming. The paper presents the characteristic of Scratch visual programming language, the framework of VBA programming course with elements of Scratch. It contains also students’ opinions about learning the basics of programming with visual programming language. In the main part of the article the author presents the results of the survey that was at conducted at the beginning of 2019 on a group of Polish Master’s students (n=119) The author’s observation and students’ opinions allow to conclude that Scratch is very easy to access and to use. It makes introduction to programming more enjoyable, helps to concentrate on the problem, solution structure, and the flow of the process. Scratch platform is not an ideal tool, however it allows for faster introduction of new elements of programming languages such as variables, loops, code blocks, objects. Finally, visual programming languages thanks to its easiness and quickly visible final effect (working application) encourages students to self-development in the field of computer programming. Performed research indicates also that business students notice the benefits of knowing basics of programing, they would like to attend basic programing classes. Students acquire knowledge and skills mainly performing instructions received from the teacher (86%) and watching video tutorials. The comparative analysis showed also some differences between various groups of students. Therefore, tools like Scratch can be successfully used to develop IT courses for non-majors. Many advantages make Scratch useful in introductory programming courses prepared for business students that frequently had no prior experience in the area of IT applications development.

The term “visual language” means different things to different people. To some, it means the objects handled by the language are visual. To others, it means the language itself is visual. To the first group of people, “visual language” means “language for processing visual information,” or “visual information processing language.” To the second group of people, “visual language” means “language for programming with visual expressions,” or “visual programming language.”

Parsing visual languages with picture layout grammars

Improving students' understanding of basic programming concepts through visual programming language: The role of self-efficacy

The aim of this paper is the implementation of a methodological workflow for the diagnosis of masonry settlings, within the HBIM approach, developing a rule-based logical inference tool in Visual Programming Language. The rule-based inferencing diagnosis is a guided process, which increases the confidence factor about settlings and actual causes, on the basis of surveyors’ technical insights and evidences. The final step is the suggestion of appropriate interventions. The results show that inference logic is directly applicable to the diagnosis problem; their efficacy depends on i) the structured parametric and data modelling of decay patterns in the HBIM model and ii) the knowledge base training. The application has been validated on a case study, Masseria Don Cataldo (Bari, South Italy).

Rapid prototyping of domain-specific software requires a systematic software development methodology and user-friendly tools [20]. As visual tools are becoming increasingly popular for non-computing professionals and end-users, visual programming languages (VPLs) would potentially challenge traditional specification languages for rapid software prototyping due to their intuitiveness and ease-of-use. Different from CASE toolsets, VPLs are executable specification languages that are defined by graph grammars and syntax-directed rewriting rules, apart from being at a high level. This means that the prototyped domain software can also be rigorously verified to ensure that it is safe and risk-free. We call VPLs designed for specific application domains as Domain-Specific Visual Languages (DSVLs).

VIPR and the Visual Programming Challenge

The Programming Languages (PL) Track provides researchers and practitioners with a forum to present their ideas and experience in designing new programming concepts and implementing programming languages. It includes the topics of Compiling Techniques, Domain-Specific Languages, Formal Semantics and Syntax, Garbage Collection, Language Design and Implementation, Languages for Modeling, Model-Driven Development and Model Transformation, New Programming Language Ideas and Concepts, New Programming Paradigms, Practical Experiences with Programming Languages, Program Analysis and Verification, Program Generation and Transformation, Programming Languages from All Paradigms (Agent-Oriented, Aspect-Oriented, Functional, Logic, Object-Oriented, etc.), and Visual Programming Languages.

Prograph is a programming environment and language which has been available on the Apple Macintosh platform for more than 5 years. It provides a sophisticated application builder, together with a visual programming language, supported by a powerful program development environment. The programming language uses an object-oriented model for data abstraction and the logic is based on a dataflow model of computation, specified graphically.Graphical dataflow gives programmers a clear view of the potential for exploitation of concurrency and so the Prograph language appears to give some leverage for the programming of parallel or distributed systems. This still leaves many issues unresolved, however, since for example dataflow is usually associated with fine-grain parallelism, but expected target architectures are unlikely to support fine-grain parallelism efficiently. This paper discusses the preliminary investigation of the issues of Prograph and parallelism.KeywordsParallel EvaluationApple MacintoshDataflow GraphDataflow ModelRemote ExecutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This paper will present an idea of the convergence of Visual Programming Languages (VPL) and Real Time Operating System (RTOS). The two technologies are both significant in the fields of Embedded System but developed independently of each other for years. In this paper, we will introduce the concept of VPL for RTOS (VPL-RTOS): use VPL to establish RTOS model, and then to generate code for RTOS automatically. We will also discuss the method of implementing such VPL-RTOS environments, along with how to use such kind of environments to do programming. Such VPL-RTOS can bring time saving and high software assurance. And engineers can no longer be deterred from using RTOS by complex textual codes.Copyright © 2005 by ASME