Graphical Programming Language

Question

In control engineering or instrumentation, I see Simulink or LabVIEW(G) is pretty popular. In ESL design, I see that Agilent SystemVue is gaining some popularity.

If you see the well established compiler theroy, almost 100% is about the textual language. But how about the graphical language?

Is there any noticable research or discussion about the graphical programming language? In terms of

• Theory about Graphical Language - syntactic/semantic analysis and whatever relevant
• expressiveness (Actually, I asked a question about it at SO - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2427496/what-do-you-mean-by-the-expressiveness-in-programming-lanuguage)
• Possibility of the Graphical language
• ...

Or what do you think about the Graphical Programming Language?

Answer 1

Prograph is pretty cool - it's a general purpose graphical programming language and it uses a data flow paradigm.

See also Marten.

Answer 2

From a slightly different angle, this is in issue tackled in the interfaces for graphical programming tools for creative use, such as MaxMSP and Isadora - it might be useful to see how they handle the issues involved.

Answer 3

Quartz Composer presents a graphical interface for constructing image composition workflows. (I think that would be considered a "programming language".)

Answer 4

Wouldn't know anything about theory, but Lego MindStorms has a great graphical programming environment for programming the NXT robot toolkit (based on LabView components) that is extremely fun to use.

For kids it seems to be very easy environment in which to learn how to program by for example tweaking the functionality of existing programs or following instructions. When English (or any other written language for that matter) is not all that well understood the graphical environment makes it much easier to use than any written textual language.

The graphical language is perhaps "simple" in the sense that there is only one loop construct, one switch construct and a set of "high" level functions but i find it fit for the purpose.

Answer 5

I heard about one such language called DRAKON. It was developed for the Buran space project and now it seems to rebirth (language, not Buran =)). The only problem is that the most of materials about this language is in Russian. I'll give you some links anyway:

• Article in Russian Wikipedia.
• OberonCore forum DRAKON subsection in Russian.
• DRAKON + Oberon = DRON visual programming language in English.