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Multiple-Representation Visual Compositional Dataflow Programming

Many tasks that end users want to accomplish with a computer program are fundamentally data-flow transformations, and both visual and textual programming systems have been created to fill this need, but these are often inflexible, unapproachable, or cumbersome, satisfying a niche at one stage of the process but limited at others. An approach that suits one part of the program, or one time in its development, may be confounding at another, but the user is stuck with both the constructive and obstructive aspects of a tool’s chosen paradigm throughout. Much of this difficulty can be removed by enabling the cohabitation of multiple editing paradigms in a single program for the user to choose how to tackle the current point in the process - and change their mind. We present a new data-flow programming environment where the same program, or parts of the same program, can be viewed and edited as linear text, a node-and-wire graph representation, or a two-dimensional grid layout, and the correspondence between these representations is made clear through a continuous visual identity for each part of the program.

Interleaved 2D Notation for Concatenative Programming

Concatenative languages use implicit argument passing to provide a concise expression of programs comprising many composed transformation functions. However, they are sometimes regarded as “write-only” languages because understanding code requires mentally simulating the manipulations of the argument stack to identify where values are produced and consumed. All of this difficulty can be avoided with a notation that presents both the functions and their operands simultaneously, which can also ease editing by making available values and functions directly apparent. This paper presents a two-dimensional notation for these programs, comprising alternating rows of functions and operands with arguments and return values indicated by physical layout, and a tool for interactive live editing of programs in this notation.