[chewxy]

Ugh. No. I've recently had the bad luck to debug a program in National Instruments' LabView. I felt like screaming and tearing down walls. On the other hand, the best visual programming experience I had was Pentaho's Kettle ETL tool, and even that I still prefer to write code.

EDIT: Ah, I noticed the author mentioned LabView, and I very much agree with this statement:

> But the average user doesn’t need that!

>But those tools give people power. They enrich lives. They save time. They make previously impossible (or close to impossible) tasks… possible.

I disagree with this:

> And that is what Visual Software Creation is all about.

Please, by all means teach people programming and basic algorithm. Visual programming is still a terrible shortcut.

[__float]

LabVIEW! I, too, recall my mixed feelings when I started with it. It's much easier for people who have never programmed before--there's no weird syntax to learn (why can't I use = to compare?)--but I've found resistance in said users not wanting to move on to a language with widespread, real world use (like C++).

Is it worth starting with it? I'm not entirely sure. I'm under the belief that such "difficult" hurdles from which a visual programming language protects one are best learned while still learning the simplest concepts.