Out of Flatland: towards 3-D visual programming

  • Authors:

  • E. P. Glinert

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York

  • Venue:
  • ACM '87 Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow
  • Year:
  • 1987

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Abstract

The tantalizing potential of so-called visual and iconic programming remains largely unfulfilled because of several unresolved issues. After briefly enumerating the open problems, we review the BLOX methodology which we recently introduced in an effort to overcome some of them. BLOX has been presented in the literature to date in terms of multiple planar diagrams, which impart to the methodology what may be termed a 2.5-dimensional appearance. In the main part of this paper, we show that this is actually but a special, restricted case of the general methodology, which naturally encompasses three dimensions and more. We then argue that it is often unnatural for programmers to compose programs, to view data structures, and to perform other computer-related activities, in less than 3-D.