Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!bridge2!olivea!apple!oey From: oey@Apple.COM (Tim Oey) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: OOP diagrams, visual semantics Message-ID: <45836@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 19 Oct 90 23:34:53 GMT References: <34723@cup.portal.com> <1859@greek.csd.mot.com> Distribution: na Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA Lines: 41 In article <34723@cup.portal.com> spage@cup.portal.com (S spage Page) writes: >I'm documenting an object-oriented system with lots of objects. I need to >come up with pictures showing class inheritance, instances of classes, [...] >Yikes! There's a lot of semantic information to get across. Clearly you >can't communicate everything about a system in a single diagram. [...] lance@motcsd.csd.mot.com (lance.norskog) responds: >My take on this is that you want to be visual from the beginning, and >design a programming system where you push pictures around. A full listing >then becomes all the pictures, where you can only see some of them on >the screen. This is called Visual Programming. > >Trying to take an existing textual system and build a picture displaying >its cross-referentiality (Program Visualization) is doomed from the >start. I strongly agree. I've been using such a visual object oriented language called Prograph which runs on the Macintosh. The diagrams are the source code. It also compiles into machine code. The whole programming environment is very well integrated. It's available from MacConnection (and other fine mail order outlets). Prograph still needs some time to mature (mainly to develop a larger class library like MacApp) but it is already an excellent tool. I've also seen Fabrik (nice but constrained by its implementation in SmallTalk and not commercially available) and I've tried Serius (another visual langauge on the Mac). Serius is far less elegant than Prograph and not as flexible. I've also looked briefly at VIP and Cause (all on the Mac) but didn't find them exciting. Who else out there has tried visual programming languages and what do you think? Especially object-oriented ones? Will this be the future of programming? If you e-mail me, I'll post a summary. Cordially, Tim Oey (oey@applelink.apple.com) "As is proper, I disclaim everything"