"Flow-Based Programming", 2nd Edition, for Kindle is now available from Amazon

Written by Administrator Friday, 04 March 2011 14:06

Hot off the press! "Flow-Based Programming", 2nd Edition, for Kindle is now available from Amazon - http://lnkd.in/k3XDn3 . And you can also read it using Kindle for PC, iPad, BlackBerry, Android...

2 days ago

Amazon.com: Flow-Based Programming - 2nd Edition eBook: J. Paul... amazon.com

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It is an easier more intuitive way of programming. We see how easy kids embrace and enjoy this way of programming and how 'non-programmers' have the ability to program, and they program much faster with less errors. At TiViPE (www.tivipe.com) we succeeded to let scholars get control over a humanoid robot within 30 minutes using our software.

A little over a decade ago we started the development of TiViPE wondering at that time why it wasn't used more widely. We decided to create a simple migration mechanism for textual programmers, but many seem comfortable with their own way of development, and usually try to find ways why not to use another approach.

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don't know anything about robotics, but it sounds fascinating! I had heard of RobotFlow, which apparently is visual, and I will take a look at TiViPE.

Most of my experience has been with business applications: here a lot of the design is done using visual (data flow) techniques. Unfortunately most of us are brainwashed with the von Neumann paradigm, and it is very difficult to get from a data flow design to a running program using this paradigm. The same paradigm also makes us think that, to represent a running program visually, we have to show the *control* flow. This is actually more work than just coding the program up in some textual notation, so you still can't easily get from design to running code. On the other hand, in FBP, the notation is basically the same at all levels, and you can move up or down at will. Transition from design to running code is seamless! --

here are various reasons why dataflow programming did not enter the mainstream. Johnston et al in an influential survey [1] described software and some hardware related issues with dataflow models: the data token system of program control cannot easily support iteration and arbitrarily complex data structures for dataflow programming languages, without adding significant complexity and potential deadlocks to programs. The data token system is better suited to DSP type applications, rather than being a general purpose model of computation.

[1] Wesley M. Johnston, J. R. Paul Hanna, and Richard J. Millar, “Advances in dataflow programming languages,” ACM Comput. Surv. 36, no. 1 (2004): 1-34

Paul do you have any idea why visual flow based programming today is used so little compared to textual programming languages?

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From a Linked In discussion