Sorry to repeat the post, but when you don't answer soon enough in
/., it seems you are ignored by the rest of the people, other by the one you answer directly.
Besides, it seems in this thread, the majority are programmers, not Software archtiects, because how else the comment I quote is modded 'insightful' (I have still mod points I cant use in this thread, FWIW) and my comment is ignored?
Because text based stuff works. All the graphical programming stuff essentially is experimental. ALL of them have major faults. Yes, there are some people who think that everything can be done in UML and then automatically have that generate code, but that requires a huge investment to learn UML (at least as much time as it takes to learn a text based language) plus the code generated is not necessarily efficient. This is a very old idea, people have been working on this for decades!
It is only recently that we've had graphical displays that I would considere good enough for the level of detail necessary. The computer monitors from 10 years ago were not high enough resolution.
And frankly there's nothing wrong with text based programming. After all we are programmers. We all learned calculus (or should have), physics (or should have), we learned all the theory (or should have), we wrote term papers using text, and so forth. So to learn a simple programing language should not be a hurdle to anyone. We're professionals, we should never be saying "this is too hard!"
Graphical user interfaces are not efficient in terms of building something up. Lots and lots of mouse movement is necessary merely to draw out a basic set of blocks and flow control but then you still need lots and lots of mouse movement to apply the correct sets of properties to each box, each line, and so forth (ie, type in variable names, set their type, make them const, place them in the correct scope, etc). Whereas text you just start typing and it is fast. That's why we still use command language interfaces instead of graphical user interfaces for most professionals, they're faster and more efficient. You may think that typing is slow and cumbersome, but I find using tools like Visio and Powerpoint to be slow and cumbersome.
Finally, how are you going to share your graphical program? Do you require everyone who will read your code to also have the same graphical code viewer, no matter what operating system they are on? Sure this may be ok if you're just doing simplistic visual basic but in the real world you can't rely on this. The practical matter is that it will get translated into a textual form just to be shared. At which point you may have well done it in text to start with. Why do we have so many programming languages? Because not everyone agrees on just one language, and of course no language is equally efficient in all problem domains. The same issue will exist in any graphical programming style; no one will agree on just one, and you'll need different variants.
Basically, text based programs are indeed simpler and more robust. Now maybe you don't like some programming languages because they're too verbose and hard to type, in which case choose a language that uses higher level constructs, and so forth.
What about examples like http://www.genexus.com/ [genexus.com] http://www.windev.com/ [windev.com] or http://www.velneo.com/ [velneo.com] ?
Check this, 2+ years ago, how it runs in Android like a full-fledged windows app (not the typical watered-down app created for mobile devices), with the very same functionality in Windows/MacOSX/Linux & Android, without writing a single line of extra code. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
Despite not being 'famous', these tools are very succesful AND POWERFUL, in the sense that users are happy with them, they can solve complex problems with them, and such users are experienced in 3GL languages and HATE to think working again in the 3GL way most of their time.
In my personal experience, (I consider myself more a software architect than a programmer and I programmed a lot when young), and any of such 3 tools is a FAR BETTER option than horrible ( compared to such 3 tools, regarding productivity) tools like VisualStudio, Netbeans or Eclipse.
Software architects with real knowledge, can take a lot of advantage of such 4GL+ tools , I don't understand how people writes about supposed 'limitations', I hope they explain what are they talking about, perhaps they talk about cases equivalent in construction of giving an imaginary rapid-house-building tool to blue-collar workers without engineering and/or architecture knowledge?
