Tim Anderson notes that Visual Programming seems to be making a comeback:

The first true visual programming environment I used was IBM’s VisualAge Smalltalk. I liked it and thought it was a shame when IBM reverted to pure code-based development with Eclipse. Admittedly, complex applications got fairly confusing, with lines everywhere.

From a parentage standpoint, IBM was copying the functionality in PARTS, which came out of Digitalk's Visual Smalltalk. The problem was always the level of granularity - if you use a tool like that to lay out a UI and connect widgets and domain models, you get what we used to call "green haze" - too many lines on screen to see anything at all. I said then that I thought such connectivity might be a good idea if it was used at a higher (component) level - and that's what Tim notes is happening now:

Now it seems visual programming is back. The other day Scratch hit the news, a cool visual programming environment for kids. I like the way that jigsaw-like shapes are used to indicate whether or not two blocks can be fitted together.

Yahoo has Pipes, drag-and-drop RSS feed combination and transformation.

Now here comes Microsoft PopFly, online visual programming for Silverlight.

I suppose I really ought to play with Pipes, since it's living at the level I always thought might be useful (although - the catch is creating components that have useful connecting points). I'm still a bit skeptical about all of this, but it's nice to see an old idea being tried again, at what I think is a more appropriate level.

Technorati Tags: visual programming, wiring, PARTS