Subject:
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Re: Programming the RCX...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 9 Apr 2001 13:13:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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932 times
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In lugnet.robotics, sjbaker1@airmail.net writes:
> Dean Hystad wrote:
>
> > I have to disagree. I personally have three fairly significant robotic
> > applications in the field which were developed using a visual programming
> > language. I must confess that the language was not purely visual. The
> > software IC components were written in Pascal.
>
> Connecting data paths between conventionally programmed chunks is not
> the same thing as "programming".
I have hard time seeing how taking simple constructs and organizing them
into something which exhibits a behavior not anticipated by the author of
the constructs is not programming. How does it differ from arranging
textual tokens in a specific order to create a program?
> > So theoretically, once the grammar was built up of
> > enough simple components, you could do away with text based programming
> > altogether.
>
> Yeah - *theoretically* - but in practice, people don't do that.
I happen to know of many people who do just that. In the signal processing
realm a very significant application can be generated using only simple
boolean and arithmetic operations. Toss in a few programmable filters and
you have everything you need. You should try downloading a copy of National
Instuments LabView for evaluation. Or,even better, try Robolab which is
like LabView for Lego Mindstorms.
> > Finally, don't forget the millions of systems controlled by Programmable
> > Logic Controllers (PLC's) running ladder programs. I guess all those
> > machines out there building the airplanes we fly in, the cars we drive, the
> > appliances we use, or processing the materials for the house we live in must
> > not be "real".
>
> But it's still not a visual programming language...it doesn't take the input
> description and generate the machine code for the application.
It is most definately a visual programming language. The input description
is used to generate an executable for the machine. So what if the
executable isn't in machine language, but instead requires the presence of
another application to function. If generation of machine code is a
required part of programming, then no program has ever ben written in Java,
Smalltalk, Lisp, Python, Perl, ... (sorry, I don't have space to list the
hundreds of programming languages which are either interpreted or compile to
some intermediate form).
> Those things don't fall into the realm of "programming" any more than
> dragging and dropping an icon on your Windoze desktop is programming.
I think you just need some more exposure to the real world. Computing does
not begin and end at the desktop, that is a only a small (and somewhat
boring)part. There are people creating significant applications every day
using tools that you (or I) have never heard of. Try to keep and open mind,
and remember to explore.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Programming the RCX...
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| (...) I love responding to my own post. I just checked out you website and see you are an explorer with an open mind (at least an open source mind). I, however, am an ass. Sorry (23 years ago, 9-Apr-01, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Programming the RCX...
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| (...) Connecting data paths between conventionally programmed chunks is not the same thing as "programming". (...) Yeah - *theoretically* - but in practice, people don't do that. (...) But it's still not a visual programming language...it doesn't (...) (23 years ago, 9-Apr-01, to lugnet.robotics)
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