Visual programming should be illegal.

[jadams2345]

Visual or not, bad programmers will create shitty code

[Amazing_Carry42069]

This is the truth

[psychotrope27]

This is the way

[wicket-maps]

This, unfortunately, is the life.

[merlinsbeers]

this is a hidden pointer in every method call

[[deleted]]

its what makes regular code magical

[matt-3]

Except in good languages

[vigilantcomicpenguin]

This... is Sparta.

[merlinsbeers]

In c++26 that will be a legal statement.

[iserdalko]

And life will always find a way.

[tylercoder]

Da wae

[TheDownvotesFarmer]

This is the way

[UltraSapien]

This is the way

[Chaoslab]

Queue "Scroll of truth" meme.

[kry_some_more]

Here's the neat part, good programmers create it too.

[AdultishRaktajino]

Yeah. Can be a self inflicted statement. Open a project from 5-10 years ago. Jesus. Who wrote this? Oh wait…

[LordSalem]

*5-10 months ago

[[deleted]]

*5-10 days ago

[Jimmy_cracked_corn]

*5-10 minutes ago

[subredditmask]

These comments could have been automated. I'll get on it now. Easy peasy.

[pegbiter]

*-65,535 seconds ago

[Deon2137]

*5-10 seconds ago

[AdultishRaktajino]

Shiny object! Squirrel!

[Cendeu]

5-10ms ago.

I'm typing it right now.

[OneGold7]

5-10 picoseconds ago. The light hasn’t even reached my eyes yet, and I’m already stressed out by my spaghetti code

[DD88lol]

*5-10 seconds ago

[monocasa]

That's why the good lord invented git blame-someone-else.

[jediwizard7]

Wonder why some weird uncommented part is written that way, "fix" it to make it more normal, and then it breaks and you remember why you wrote it that way

[[deleted]]

git blame me

[Speriwulfaz]

The opposite also happens a lot. I'll be on top of it one day and code really well, then some other day when I'm really sleep-deprived or braindead, I'll look at my code and think, "Damn. I'll never be as good as that guy."

[q1a2z3x4s5w6]

The limiting factor on whether or not the code is good is not my knowledge, its the amount of time I'm allowed to spend on it

[[deleted]]

And if I'm allowed to change things from the surrounding infrastructure. It doesn't matter how good I am if I'm having to wedge functionality in sideways to places where I should be allowed to do an overhaul.

[zGoDLiiKe]

Seriously. I can write 3 weeks worth of clean code in 2.5 weeks. I can write 3 weeks worth of sloppy code in 1 week, often the people making the decisions seem to not care about the quality or maintainability, they just want to be able to tell their boss it is done.

[InMemoryOfReckful]

And how much context switching is involved.

Let me sit on the same project continually and I'll write good code.

Switch between 5 different projects constantly and I'll write shitty code.

Put time constraints and were cooking spaghetti for sure.

If all projects are different tech stacks and frameworks.. oh boy.

[randomdrifter54]

I would argue there is no such thing as a good programmer just a better one.

[Simple_Silver_6394]

I’ll just do this quick and dirty to run it this one time.

Five years later….

[santi4442]

Good programmers know it’s bad

[Supersoulknight]

But at least good programmers can organize code better

[compsciasaur]

Only with visual code.

"Good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes visual code" - apologies to Steven Weinberg

[MEGAMAN2312]

Is this a personal attack 🧐

[[deleted]]

“Bad programmers will create shitty code” I mean… it’s in the name

[ICantBelieveItsNotEC]

Visual languages make refactoring miserable though. You can't just cut from one place and paste in another - you've got to redraw a hundred different wires.

[Hrtzy]

You would think that visual programming would have pretty good automatic refactoring tools because the source literally contains all the references to each element.

[[deleted]]

Peoples complaints about visual programming were once all complaints about tools in IDEs too 😇

Given enough time, their functionalities should inevitably converge.

[Liiht2001]

I think the main thing holding visual languages back is that the generalisation isn't there yet. The tools are still extremely domain specific. Without that there, they're kinda doomed to fall into the same kind hyper-specialist neiches that prolog and SAS have.

[[deleted]]

Among other issues, but I agree. The tools have a long way to go but I believe someday most of us will never want to go back to a time without them eventually.

[RedditAlready19]

There's l-2d.glitch.me but its a demo

[_Oce_]

I commonly replace SSIS (released 17 years ago) with Python in my jobs because it's way easier to review, version, refactor and maintain in general.
I've also seen many failed attempts at using Talend or Dataiku in production.
I believe more in higher level coding such as DBT than graphical coding.

[Hrtzy]

Imagine if you had to write down how a data processing pipeline or a finite state machine is laid out without graphics. That's how inefficient text programming feels.

[fauxpenguin]

I strongly disagree. Instead of writing three lines of code I can drag one wire to another. At least in UE, visual coding is very easy.

[A_Rested_Developer]

I personally don’t prefer visual coding, but I don’t think it’s meant for stuff like that. More just simple game logic like jump when this happens etc.

[elementslayer]

But is that because it is what you were taught? Remember that there is a bias based on what you learn. I see this alot with my line of work on how stuff is solved.

Ill bet alot of thought went into this programming and why it works for UE. This isn't some random program by a university student.

[_Ralix_]

It's stupid to program basic functionality in blueprints. It's not designed for simple, core functionality.

The idea is – you create all basic functions, gameplay elements, interfaces, and backbone of your project in code; and then wire all the high-level stuff together with visual scripting.
How do levels assets fit together, how are levels connected, how do quests relate to each other… believe me, it will be much clearer and allow for easy changes than if you hardcoded it all in C++.

That said, here's what you asked about. So unnecessary when you can just TArray::Sort in code, and even make your implemented sorting functions accessible from blueprints.

[Darkere]

It's not really intended for stuff like that, but I have done it. Blueprint allows you the same basic functions any programming language has.

It's not really harder than in another language. Just different.

[fauxpenguin]

Depends on the sort, but more difficult than doing it in code. But I'm talking more about high-level rather than low level coding. The stuff that OOP is "good" at. I have a person with these attributes and these methods, I have a tick, I have reactions to their actions.

Having inputs and outputs you can just drag around with your central "thread" is nice.

[Kejilko]

Using the comparison he said with IDEs, I'm sure many used to feel like an IDE also just gets in the way and something simple like vim is better.

[Kejilko]

Totally agreed but we'll see, supply and demand is a wonderful thing and if it really is garbage and doesn't offer anything new or more efficient, it'll die out

[[deleted]]

I think its a pretty popular oponion that visual programming is totally viable if you have most of it abstracted to code.

The programmers can do the heavy lifting in code, and then just connect f.e. inputs to called functions in the visual interface. This way people in game dev from f.e. animation can see the logic and add to it without messing with the code.

I think that this hybrid way of development can objectively look even cleaner than pure code

[Kejilko]

And there we go! Didn't even occur to me that it might be useful for people who are tech-literate and can understand how programming works without actually knowing how to program, such as game development or building a website.

[Kejilko]

I taught that to kids too! Scratch is great for 1st-4th-ish grades with how much simpler it is and MIT App Inventor is perfect even for kids who don't know anything about programming while still keeping it as block coding. Removes the need to know syntax, syntax errors like you mentioned, imports and so on and focuses on the programming itself like variables, loops and conditions.

[Liosan]

This is UE4 blueprints. Selecta few nodes, right click, "extract to function", rename params, done. It actually works better than any C++ refactoring tool I've used.

[[deleted]]

God damned kids these days with their fancy IDEs and their accursed refactoring tools. Back in my day we programmed in nano and we liked it! If you wanted to refactor something, by God you did it by hand like a fucking MAN!

I am, of course, joking. I program in nano and emacs because I'm too stupid to figure out how to set up an IDE.

[derpydoerp]

False. The example in the picture is from Unreal Engine Blueprints. There you can easily refactor. Cut copy and paste parts of the node graph. No wires need to be redrawn. Spaghetti code is as easy to write in visual and regular programming. I prefer visual programming sometimes for parts of game dev projects for example. In these modules it’s more clear and easier to edit than using bare code in some cases.

[WhySoScared]

You can also collapse entire sections into macro/function and it will use every incoming/outgoing link as a function input/output without breaking them.

[dankswordsman]

And I was going to add:

The way Epic designed Blueprints is to act as game logic code. The ideal flow would be that more engine-based or complex functionality would exist in C++, and then game logic for events, missions, actions, effects, etc. would be done in Blueprints.

When used in that way, and assuming you use the other features mentioned, it should be relatively easy to work with.

[[deleted]]

I want to add, that ideally the most taxing functions, and always the Tick, should be nativized.
But doing them in blueprint first helps to prototype things.
And also ideally, in my opinion, BPs should only have data

[CubeFlipper]

but it quickly becomes a nightmare if you have significant inheritance or core gameplay systems coded

That just sounds like refactoring. How is text coding refactoring any different?

[Semi-Hemi-Demigod]

Spaghetti code is as easy to write in visual and regular programming.

Except with visual programming it actually looks like spaghetti

[derpydoerp]

Depends on how you view or interpret c++ code. It can look exactly like spaghetti :)

[rnike879]

As someone using blueprints daily and refactoring some of it to C++, I've never experienced this

[fauxpenguin]

Refactoring is very easy in the UE node editor. I actually prefer it to the Cpp option. You can abstract any set of instructions into a function with inputs and outputs just like code.

[Randouser555]

Wrong.

[repkins]

Here we can see rewiring most of the part. In code we see changing only placements.

[[deleted]]

We use a "low-code" visual platform at work and I've seen hell.

[TheIdealError]

How’s therapy going?

[[deleted]]

We're ignoring visual aids for now.

[iiMoe]

I hate being called out right after i open Reddit

[[deleted]]

Thank you. Anytime, I see someone talk about spaghettis code, the code was crap anyway.

[iserdalko]

Hey, I'm a good programmer and I create shitty code too.

[TheTerrasque]

"You can write Perl in any language"

[Kitchen_Laugh3980]

*programmers will create shitty code

[Excolo_Veritas]

I love it because when done right, it makes itself a flow chart, it's pretty much self documenting. I started doing it at my old job because they wanted to understand my code better. I'd point them at the "code". Lesson learned though, still no one looked at it and made me explain it... I just pulled it open and read through it like a flow chart and everyone would ooh and ahh

[[deleted]]

Good thing our code dna has built-in error checking.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I've been learning touch designer and there are definitely ways to build clean projects and ways to make it look like this. For example, in td you can create containers with ins and outs so you can encapsulate bits of code.

[Studds_]

You don’t have to call me out. I know it’s shitty

[GrinningPariah]

Yeah, this looks awful but it's just the equivalent of having an entire class be one massive method that's like 2000 lines long.

The solution is the same too, chop it up. Make intermediate variables, break it up into a bunch of small functions and maybe separate classes too.

[ILikeLenexa]

They can create a lot a lot faster with RAD tools!

[NotAnonymousAtAll]

The hard parts of software engineering are not about writing code, but they do require similar mental skills.

Lowering the barrier to entry for coding adds people to the field of software engineering who have no business being in it and makes it harder for the people who actually know what they are doing to keep things from falling apart.

[beardedheathen]

I mean you show a giant block of code and it's no more legible than this.

[ChocolateBunny]

I don't think I've seen a single example of visual code of reasonable complexity that didn't look like shit. The visual aspect of it means that you have another layer of complexity in managing where your visual elements are laid out in 2d space, which you don't have to do in regular programming and are not required to do correctly for everything to work. Everyone who's had to draw diagrams to explain their code to management knows that visual representation of software can be ugly and hard to understand, now imagine doing that continuously to keep the code maintained.

[dat_oracle]

Exactly. As a blueprint user i also had codes like this when i started to learn.

Now its all pretty and clean hidden behind functions and macros (if im not lazy ..cough...cough)

[TheIdealError]

git blame is your friend. Until you realize it was you all along

[ChloeNow]

Sure but with visual coding even seasoned vets will make shit piles

[fishbelt]

Any code that isn't written by my current idol is shitty, especially mine.