Has Flow-Based Programming's Time Arrived? 268
An anonymous reader writes "Flow-based programming keeps resurfacing lately. FBP claims to make it easier for non-programmers to build applications by stringing together transformations built by expert programmers. Many projects have already been using similar approaches for a long time, with less (or different?) hype. Is it time to take a closer look at flow-based programming? 'Clean functions – functions without side effects – are effectively pure transformations. Something comes in, something goes out, and the results should be predictable. Functions that create side effects or rely on additional inputs (say, from a database) are more complicated to model, but it’s easier to train programmers to notice that complexity when it’s considered unusual. The difficulty, of course, is that decomposing programs into genuinely independent components in a fine-grained way is difficult. Many programmers have to re-orient themselves from orthodox object-oriented development, and shift to a world in which data structures are transparent but the behavior – the transformation – is not.'"
Re:Like libraries? (Score:5, Funny)
Old being the new new has already gotten old. Old is the new old, new is the new new.
Re:Like libraries? (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, sounds more like LabView.
Fishing through that programming environment's icon set for the correct function is very close to what I imagine hell must be like.
They have an icon for every possible programming function?
http://www.devtopics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/image6.png [devtopics.com]