Hi John I don't think I would call the Analyst "visual programming". (And you are right that to this day most people can't see what a spreadsheet really is (or is "trying to be"). I think the real interest of the Analyst was that it was early and good thinking about what easily programmable "visual cells" could really do for the end-user.
Another early (but later) use of this idea was the original AION development system -- where the cells were embeddable in documents (like company reports) and the "formula" could be full-fledged AI goals (AION was at that time a very powerful backtracking expert system rules engine). I really liked this approach, and I got to see it powerfully used in the late 80s by Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) when I was on their technical advisory board. Cheers, Alan ________________________________ From: John Zabroski <johnzabro...@gmail.com> To: Fundamentals of New Computing <fonc@vpri.org> Sent: Wed, April 6, 2011 10:49:41 AM Subject: Re: [fonc] visual environments created by present/former VPRI staff I've many books on visual programming. I'll make a list soon of what I have. I am mostly blown away by how difficult it is to ramp-up knowledge about this domain. Even typing in the phrase into Amazon requires sifting through pages of search results and wondering what applies. As for spreadsheets like the Analyst being characterized as "visual programming" - my only source of info is the Scientific American article on VPRI's website. I am mostly stunned at how commmercial datagrid vendors completely overlook the need to specify a fine-grained object model. Instead, it is a data-bound grid object that does not structurally isolate common variabilities (e.g. from, groupby, where and select; infinite drilldown and drill-across with polymorphic Drill override for separating reduction and control scope; cellular constraints for pushing and pulling values). These datagrids also force the data-bound object to shares its persistence information. Likewise, commercial spreadsheet APIs like Actuate e.SpreadsheetDesigner are an abomination. I showed Skeleton to a datagrid product manager at Xceed and his reaction suggested innocence and not-knowing any "competition" outside his Windows WinForms/WPF/Silverlight/ASP.NET traget market. I've possessed the same innocence, so I was happy to constructively criticize his Silverlight datagrid. Duncan, No worries. Stay curious and share. On 3/31/11, David Corking <li...@dcorking.com> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 30, 2011, John Zabroski wrote: >> I am trying to round up all visual programming kit research written by you > > Does your definition of visual programming include graphical > programming (by children)? > > If so, I imagine you might want to include: > Self > Tweak > TileScript > (All had participation of current or former VPRI/Squeak Central staff > or contractors. I don't know who were staff and who were contractors.) > > Hope that helps. > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
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