Graphical Programming Environment

Factual Questions
1

I need help remembering something.

Way back in the day, and I mean WAAAAAY back in the day, like, when I actually had an AOL account (so at least 5 or 6 years ago) I once download a demo program for my Mac.

It was a programming environment that was completely graphical. Common functions and algorithms were represented by little blocks, and you moved these blocks around and made connections between them to create your program. It was sort of like building a complicated flowchart, except the flowchart was the program

Anyway, this thing was a bit ahead of its time, and not very useful, but I got to thinking: this would be an excellent way to teach programming concepts to little kids (like elementary school age) who are much more interested in seeing visual systems work than writing actual code. Since I’m a big proponent of teaching programming, it would be cool if I could find this thing.

But I can’t remember what it was called. Does anyone know? Does anyone know of anything similar to what I’ve described?

2

I’m sure that this is not the same thing that you’re thinking of, but the programming language that comes with the LEGO Robotics Invention System is very similar… You move around and stack blocks of code, represented as LEGO bricks, of course, to program your homemade robot to perform various tasks. As a practical matter, btw, such languages are inevitably restricted to certain simple constructs, but I agree that they can help teach the fundamentals.

3

Chronos, I’ve seen the Lego thing before, it’s cool, but the thing I’m thinking of was actually a fairly well developed system. It had constructs for looping, branching, logic, and so on. I know it had variabled, but I don’t remember exactly how they worked.

4

Was it Cube? I remember this from Dr Dobbs several years back. It does not look as though it has progressed very far.

5

I’ve used a program called Stella to do complex modeling. You used different shaped boxes to represent different types of information. Formulas sat inside the boxes and were connected with different types of lines. Very powerful, a good introduction to complex systems. Of course, you sit a few Deadheads in front of a computer program called ‘Stella’ and of course they’ll like it.

Hope this helps,

Rhythmdvl

6

I nice guy emailed me in reference to this thread with the answer. It was Prograph.

PS:, ticker, I’ll check out Cube as well, it looks cool.

7

Hewlett-Packard developed the language called VEE (Visual Engineering Environment). It was designed to control test equipment, and is therefore now owned by the spin-off company Agilent Technologies. It’s great as a number-crunching application, since complex operations on arrays are easy. You can read about it (and download an evaluation version) at http://www.agilent.com/find/vee .