A visual programming language for drawing and executing flowcharts

TL;DR

This paper introduces vIDE, a visual programming language based on flowcharts, which simplifies program creation by focusing on visual representation and guiding constraints, demonstrated within the Eclipse IDE.

Contribution

It presents a novel method for code generation in a VPL and discusses the design and implementation of vIDE using Eclipse GMF, emphasizing visual clarity and disambiguation.

Findings

vIDE effectively visualizes algorithms as flowcharts.

The code generation method simplifies translating flowcharts into executable code.

Design principles improve user guidance and reduce ambiguity in visual programming.

Abstract

With recent advances in graphical user interfaces, more and more tasks on computers have become easier to perform. Out of the belief that creating computer programs can also be one of them, visual programming languages (VPLs) have emerged. The goal of VPLs is to shift a part of work from the programmer to the IDE so that the programmer can focus more on algorithm logic than the syntax of the implementation programming language. In this article, the methods required to build a VPL are presented, with an emphasis on a novel method of code generation in a WHILE language. Also, the methods for achieving basic principles of VPLs will be shown - suitable visual presentation of information and guiding the programmer in the right direction using constraints. These methods are demonstrated on an example of vIDE, a VPL based on the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE). The design of vIDE with respect to the Eclipse Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF) is described. The concept of a flowchart graphical notation is examined in contrast with the algorithm model it maps to. Finally, the disambiguity of the model representation of an algorithm is discussed and the methods for transforming it to an actual implementation in a programming language.