Another Idea For Visual Programming

ID:120736
 
Nov 2 2011, 2:44 pm
Not Feasible
Applies to:Dream Maker
Status: Not Feasible
Implementing this feature is not possible now or in the foreseeable future
OK so maybe my last idea wouldn't have worked because of it being too complex or taking up too much space compared to actual code, but this new design might balance simplicity with easiness.
This time the idea is to have draggable, interlocking, pieces of code with drop-down lists for input. This way no real coding would have to take place. You could just piece together the code like lego blocks.

Hopefully this example makes more sense than the last one:




If that doesn't help prove anything, then check out this game making program made by the MIT!
The design is so easy, that an 8-year-old might be able to program with it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7pLlvNSOMQ&t=1m4s
I have skipped it in halfway so you can see how the program works.
If something that complicated could be made with such a graphical programming interface, then the possiblities seem endless. I think that if such a design were implemented as an option in Dream Maker, then programming might be a lot less frustrating. Let me know what you think of this idea!
Nov 2 2011, 4:59 pm
Scratch and Alice 2.2 are the only IDEs I've used that has this "graphical programming interface." It's not as fun as it looks, but it's very simple to use and extremely easy to learn.

I could've learned Scratch and Alice in the same day if I'd tried... They're so easy to learn that the only problem that I encountered when using them was actually thinking of something to do with them. Unfortunately, they're more for storytelling than game development.

Maybe BYOND 6 could be like this, and 3D as well. It's too bad that if BYOND would try it, it'd be so out of style by the time it is finished that we'd only want something even better because that would be the new standard.
Nov 4 2011, 7:14 am
Seriously, visual programming is not the wave of the future. It's impossible to do anything reasonably complex within that sort of structure without giving yourself more headaches. Programming may someday evolve away from the keyboard but that day won't come anytime soon.

All the same caveats apply that exist with the flowchart system, with the exception that the graphic presented above manages to squeeze more info into the same space. Readability is shot to smithereens in the process.

Actually you've got the whole thing backwards; we've been trying to teach novice programmers that real programming is nothing like working with Lego, except inasmuch as it takes experience and creativity to do something really novel. Real-world code doesn't tie together nicely like that, and treating blocks of it as something that can just drop right into place has led many an author to disaster. To use the microchip analogy (since that graphic is from an Arduino programming interface), people get the idea that programming is like using a bunch of microchips and attaching them with wires. In electronics the first thing you learn is the basic principles, long before you ever get near an integrated circuit. ICs are like like libraries, but you don't do all your programming with library calls.