Re:How Flow-Based Programming Could Save The Sanity Of Web D...
by kazagistar on Saturday August 24, 2013 @12:51AM
(#6267672)
Flow based programming is actually heavily used in music technology, where it actually is a good paradigm for the domain. Max/MSP and its open source cousin Pure Data are interesting, and have dedicated if small communities of not-exactly-programmers using them for real, creative expression.
But most of the proposed use cases are clearly bullshit, and using these languages/programs makes it clear why: organizing code in a single dimension is already hard... organizing it properly and sensibly in two dimensions much more so, as well as a number of other issues with order and tracking race conditions. For anyone who wants to really evaluate this technology, I would give these products a try.
Really though, functional programming and OOP both have sufficient support for data flows that it isn't really an issue for programmers.
But most of the proposed use cases are clearly bullshit, and using these languages/programs makes it clear why: organizing code in a single dimension is already hard... organizing it properly and sensibly in two dimensions much more so, as well as a number of other issues with order and tracking race conditions. For anyone who wants to really evaluate this technology, I would give these products a try.
Really though, functional programming and OOP both have sufficient support for data flows that it isn't really an issue for programmers.