Graphical Approach to Programming

The standand way of programming is to first write a flowchart showing how data is to flow through an algorithm, and then convert that flowchart into a text-based language such as C or MatLab. However, it is possible to compile and run a flowchart diagram directly, without resorting to lines of code. This makes it easy to implement parallel processes, since threads are automatically generated and distributed by the operating system, and it is easy to reorganize the data flow in a program. For die-hard text'ers, one can incorporate the various flavors of text-based languages into the flowchart, and can even automatically convert the flowchart to C code.

The flowchart uses a run-time engine, and thus the same flowchart is portable among Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, and RT.

The flowchart is like an electronic schematic, except instead of electron flow there is data flow, and there is a large library of data acquistion, internet protocol, math, and display utilities that can be used as the nodes of the flowchart.

The user can build a "virtual instrument", where in addition to a schematic diagram of the data flow, there is also a "front panel", containing whatever components the user puts in, such as knobs, switches, graphs, matrices, etc. Each component has a terminal on the schematic diagram, so that you can incorporate controls and indicators into the schematic.