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by rbanffy 5630 days ago
Smalltalk is now a "visual" language...

And, BTW, VB.NET is, according to Wikipedia, the only language about 60% of the .NET programmers use.
2 comments
contextfree 5630 days ago
Having the word "visual" in the name doesn't make it visual.
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jmulho 5630 days ago
Right. To be truly visual a language must also provide a bunch of widgets that you drag and drop to build graphical user interfaces. Oh wait...
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contextfree 5630 days ago
A text-based language with a GUI designer tool = a text-based language plus a GUI designer tool. It doesn't = a visual language.

I guess MSFT did take a stab at something closer to an actual visual language in Visual Studio, in the form of the Workflow Foundation designer.

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jmulho 5630 days ago
I admit Visual Basic is not near as cool as say Scratch, but it is pretty visual, especially when compared to BASIC. I think it was fair for Microsoft to use the term, some 20 years ago, given that visual languages at that time were called dataflow languages. Now, had they called it Dataflow Basic, I would have been pissed.
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bitwize 5630 days ago
With Etoys, Smalltalk is arguably more visual than languages with "visual" branding.
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rbanffy 5629 days ago
Scratch too, but, while both run on Smalltalk and are written extending the Smalltalk system, thy cannot be called Smalltalk.

Windows and browsers don't make a language visual.

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