Visual Programming and Why It Sucks

Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by Turing_Machine on Sunday September 09, 2012 @10:19AM (#4495828)

" But let’s be honest: very little software in the real world outside of a spreadsheet document is actually that simple."

http://scratch.mit.edu/

More than 2.7 million pieces of software, all created with a visual programming tool, and mostly by little kids.

Yes, most of them are simple (though there are some impressively complex projects on there). So what?

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by davorb on Sunday September 09, 2012 @10:32AM (#4495866)

Here's Tower of Hanoi written in brainfck. http://www.clifford.at/bfcpu/hanoi.bf

Scratch is awesome and as I mention in the article, one of the strengths of visual programming is that it requires much less training before you are able to actually "do" stuff. However, just because you can* do something doesn't mean it's the most optimal or the easiest way to do it.

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by Turing_Machine on Sunday September 09, 2012 @10:47AM (#4495905)

It can the most optimal and easiest way if you just want to solve your problem without spending several years learning how to program.

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by Karunamon on Sunday September 09, 2012 @10:53AM (#4495921)

Since when does it take several years learning to program to solve a problem?

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by Turing_Machine on Sunday September 09, 2012 @10:58AM (#4495932)

http://scratch.mit.edu/channel/featured

1) Pick one of these at random. 2) Assign a person who knows nothing about programming to write it in C. 3) See how long it takes.

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by Turing_Machine on Sunday September 09, 2012 @11:06AM (#4495955)

Also 4) the person you're assigning to the job is a third grader.

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by thebigshane on Sunday September 09, 2012 @12:53PM (#4496228)

Why does it need to be C?

Why not python or javascript?

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by Turing_Machine on Sunday September 09, 2012 @02:59PM (#4496589)

Feel free to run the experiment. No matter what text-based language you use, it's going to take a helluva lot longer than Scratch. That is the actual point here.

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by batista on Sunday September 09, 2012 @10:54AM (#4495923)

>Yes, most of them are simple (though there are some impressively complex projects on there). So what?

So you just repeated the complain of the author (that it only works for simple stuff), and yet you act like you challenged it.

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Re:Visual Programming and Why It Sucks by Turing_Machine on Sunday September 09, 2012 @10:57AM (#4495931)

I'm pointing out that the author's claim that "very little software is actually that simple" is bogus. Which it is.

I would bet that in terms of sheer number of procedures, the majority of software written today consists of spreadsheet and word processor macros.

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