Full Metal Jacket: A Visual Programming Language Based on Lisp

Re:Full Metal Jacket: A Visual Programming Language Based on... by DonaldFisk on Saturday July 16, 2016 @03:08PM (#12107501)

That sounds absolutely horrendous, and there's no good reason why they had to be like that. It's unreasonable to assume all visual programming languages do things the same or a similar way.

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Re:Full Metal Jacket: A Visual Programming Language Based on... by kyllo on Saturday July 16, 2016 @03:25PM (#12107558)

But you said yourself that the s-exp storage format for your language is neither easy nor safe to modify, so how is it better than XML?

Anecdotally, I've also used webMethods, SSIS, and several other visual dataflow programming languages, and they look remarkably similar to FMJ.

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Re:Full Metal Jacket: A Visual Programming Language Based on... by DonaldFisk on Saturday July 16, 2016 @10:00PM (#12108708)

I was referring to this:

> Each single graphical element had 2 or 3 different XML "source" files, distributed in different subdirectories

S-expressions with equivalent content are smaller and just as readable, and don't need an extra parser. XML is OK for text mark-up, but not as good for storing data (including programs).

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Re:Full Metal Jacket: A Visual Programming Language Based on... by Pamar on Saturday July 16, 2016 @03:21PM (#12107539)

Granted. But keep in mind that both products were made by capable companies and were used to deliver value to customers.

I would be more than happy to explore viable alternatives to traditional text-based development but so far I haven't found anything that really impressed me.

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