Domain specific visual programming – PopFly, Pipes, Scratch
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Loading ...Visual programming is gaining more and more visibility outside the the LabVIEW community. In ITWritings blog Tim Anderson draw attention to the fact that multiple visual programming languages have gained public attention lately. These include a visual programming environment Scratch for kids by MIT, Yahoo pipes RSS feed syndication language and Microsoft PopFly online visual programming language for Silverlight.
It seems that visual programming languages are gaining attention in the field of domain specific languages. This is definitely the right route to go as the main stream general purpose programming languages are hard to replace. In addition domain specific languages allow gathering experience on visual programming in general that can later be leveraged on more general purpose language domains.
National Instruments (NI) has been very protective in the field of visual programming. NI owns multiple visual programming related patents and has used this patent portfolio to keep other companies out of the field of visual programming. It’s interesting to see if NI will continue it’s protective policy and sue MIT, Yahoo and Microsoft for patent infringements.
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May 22nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Tomi:
I think this ties in very well with the question you posted about whether NI can bring dataflow to forbes… I can only hope that if NI chooses to enforce it’s patents that it will do so in a way that allows continued developement of these other “languages.” They all seem to be free, but none are open source… a little disappointing.
I have signed up for an invite to PopFly, do you have any experience with it?
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I doubt that NI can continue their present patent policy against these giants. But the future will show us. I’ve not yet had time to try these languages, it’s been a busy season at work and there has not bee much free time. I’ll play around with these languages when I’ve a little more extra time.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:00 am
Hi Tomi,
I’m sorry to use your site for this communication, however, on May 3, 2007; Rick Beauchaine made a comment on your site which I would like to address, and I’m not sure how to email him directly. If you are able to forward this email to him, I’d appreciate that. Thank you for your time.
Carrie Reinsimar. (Tomi M: Email address removed by editor)