Thanks szecs for that mention, going to check out labview when I get a chance to add it to my collection of node based programming information. I only saw the first few seconds of the video.

Well, I don't think it's a very usable tool for game programming, or most commercial programming. It's very usable for machine/measurement automation, test benches and I could build a whole CNC machine controlling with it. It seems to be usable for GUI heavy editor tools too (but not really for a graph heavy map editor), though I haven't tried that, since I don't have Labview at home.

by visual, i didn't mean vb or vc++ etc. like shippou listed. I noticed that "they quickly become too unwieldy" part a lot while searching the net and LabView appeared a lot. One other thing i also noticed is that they are usually regarded as tools meant for beginners and not for actual programming and professional work.
I hope my approach won't be nearly similar.

It works reasonably well for purely functional languages dealing with small discrete sets of functionality, but I don't see it ever taking off for a general purpose programming language.

My idea is to find a balance between visual and textual programming and have a language that can be used for almost anything from systems to web programming. You can choose to imperatively specify every single detail in code or declaratively/intentionally specify just what you need in code. Like a Smart Development Environment (SDE).
I'm still learning, so i can't really do much to fufill this, yet.

Szecs, if you have an ipad you should check out gamepress. I just watched 3 videos on labview and could see where certain functions it has would be useful in gamepress. Also, they recently had a competition where the winner would have their game put on the IOS App Store. I was new at the time, but you can bet I'll be ready for the next one.

Nathan, I hope you do fulfill it. My research has shown the viability of node based programming.

I've been a professional developer since I left university 11 years ago. Back then, people were asking "what will programming look like in 10 years". And in those 10 years, programming hasn't changed much. Game development is still largely done in C++; application development may have shifted to .NET/Java a lot more, and there is so much more focus on web-based applications, but the actual coding is very similar. We haven't all moved to using visual tools instead of writing code, hell we still write raw SQL queries rather than have it all abstracted out of sight.

So I'd be pretty cautious about making any predictions of big changes in the next ten years.

I can envision touch and speech being used more and more, it makes sense to do so. For example lets say you could just say into your mic, 'I want a 512x512 dialog box with xx buttons and I want you to create a MS SQl db and connect it to that'

Well you get the idea. Speech is a very weak area as far as I can see. There is something in this, somebody will work it out.

I've been a professional developer since I left university 11 years ago. Back then, people were asking "what will programming look like in 10 years". And in those 10 years, programming hasn't changed much. Game development is still largely done in C++; application development may have shifted to .NET/Java a lot more, and there is so much more focus on web-based applications, but the actual coding is very similar.

I actually wanted to put this in my original post. It's done the same way it was done 10 years ago and that's a long time.

@rAm_y: touch is almost everywhere now and speech is catching on. I can imagine where J.A.R.V.I.S like computers are more popular. Tony Stark does almost everything by touch and speech. I know it's a movie but so was google glass before it was made.

Nathan, I hope you do fulfill it

Thanks

Szecs, if you have an ipad you should check out gamepress. I just watched 3 videos on labview and could see where certain functions it has would be useful in gamepress. Also, they recently had a competition where the winner would have their game put on the IOS App Store. I was new at the time, but you can bet I'll be ready for the next one.

Nathan, I hope you do fulfill it. My research has shown the viability of node based programming.

Maybe Labview or a Labview like language would be useful for the high level architecture of a game, but otherwise for many things a text based language is more clear.

It's hard to express, but in most programming projects there are parts where a huge bunch of actions has to be done in a sequence (ie. initializing stuff, or even gameplay events), or just a list of things to load, or tons of parameters need to be filled. A dataflow language is not really good for doing many things in a sequence (sequence, where parallelism is bad, and wiring tons of blocks after one another as a workaround would be just a nasty workaround).

It's also questionable (or rather a matter of taste) if it's better to have parameter windows with tons of parameters for each function blocks than simply list those parameters in the text source code.

I also don't know how easy/possible it is to have a customized GUI, because it's sure you don't want to see the Windows GUI in your game (and that Labview Windows GUI has many-many bugs even in the newest versions).

So that's pretty much it IMHO. Labview MAY be good for high level architecture of a game, but certainly not better (if not worse) for all the other code. And I haven't talked about possible performance issues of using Labview.

Maybe Labview or a Labview like language would be useful for the high level architecture of a game, but otherwise for many things a text based language is more clear.

It's hard to express, but in most programming projects there are parts where a huge bunch of actions has to be done in a sequence (ie. initializing stuff, or even gameplay events), or just a list of things to load, or tons of parameters need to be filled. A dataflow language is not really good for doing many things in a sequence (sequence, where parallelism is bad, and wiring tons of blocks after one another as a workaround would be just a nasty workaround).

It's also questionable (or rather a matter of taste) if it's better to have parameter windows with tons of parameters for each function blocks than simply list those parameters in the text source code.

I also don't know how easy/possible it is to have a customized GUI, because it's sure you don't want to see the Windows GUI in your game (and that Labview Windows GUI has many-many bugs even in the newest versions).


So that's pretty much it IMHO. Labview MAY be good for high level architecture of a game, but certainly not better (if not worse) for all the other code. And I haven't talked about possible performance issues of using Labview.

LabView isn't what i had in mind as a future programming language/environment. It looks like something that gets confusing quick and the photo in it's wikipedia article bears no resemblance to simple for me.
Visual is good but still requires little text, icons on windows desktop have names even though the icons are sometimes descriptive.
I noticed that windows gui, drag and drop stuff when using vb. To someone like me that regards the design and visual look of something as important as realistic physics in a 3d game, the windows forms is just plain ugly! To use a round button, you have to write multiple lines of code, import an image, save it as a class (or something), restart visual studio, go to the tool box, look for some stuff which had stuff that contained your saved button (this were the steps i saw in a youtube video). This isn't close to simplicity in my dictionary.
A language and programming environment that has no resemblance to C (except with {}) or C based languages (basically almost all except assembly and machine code), isn't drag and drop, and also doesn't use or resemble LabView, that's it.
My vision of the future is a Smart Development Environment. You start up the SDE app and it presents you with absolutely nothing but a basic form (like paint) on which you are free to create what ever shape or form you desire with *speech commands*, touch or use of a mouse, type as basic or as much code as desire, add functionality to the SDE etc. In general, create anything you desire, whether it is a browser, game engine, website, calculator, *OS* etc.without the need to type 2 million lines of code and use any more than 1 language. Absolute control in the hands of the programmer. The only limitation being your mind and imagination.

In general, create anything you desire, whether it is a browser, game engine, website, calculator, *OS* etc.without the need to type 2 million lines of code and use any more than 1 language. Absolute control in the hands of the programmer. The only limitation being your mind and imagination.

That'll be a neat trick. What are you going to do with your billions of dollars?