pluribus: a visual programming environment for education and research

Pluribus, an interactive visual environment that extends the expressive power of recursive functional programming languages such as Lisp, is described. It uses a function-machine metaphor that views mathematical functions as machines that communicate through data-flow and control-flow connections. Machines are shown as icons. A structure consisting of several machines that function as a unit can be subsumed under a single icon. Unless otherwise constrained by inhibitory connections, machines fire when their inputs are available. This default control logic naturally gives rise to ostensibly parallel operation. Thus, as well as greatly facilitation the teaching of programming and modeling, pluribus provides a powerful environment for designing parallel algorithms and for simulating complex real-time control systems with asynchronous components