A visual programming interface for Smalltalk

It has been hypothesized that “visual” programming can lead to faster development and better programs. Whether this hope is justified still remains to be seen and one of the aims of the work is to provide tools allowing an objective exploration of this hypothesis. The visual syntax described in the paper defines a graphical representation of messages and the “flow” of objects within a method. Its implementation allows methods to be viewed and edited either graphically or as text with immediate conversion from one form to the other. Graphical representation eliminates certain types of programming errors and provides better presentation of the semantics and logic of the code. It also helps visualise code tracing in a more object-oriented way. While the experience suggests that graphical representation makes code easier to understand, further empirical study is required