Scalable Connectionless Iconic Programming

An experimental solely icon-based visual programming language has been designed and implemented and is reported here. After the implementation and testing of version 7 a thorough usability testing procedure was pursued before the implementation of version 8. This VPL is specifically designed to not use any connection lines in the visual presentation and to provide a fixed but resizable visual format to avoid the time-consuming visual rearrangement tasks in other icon-based VPLs. The language was also designed to be generic for building applications based upon any chosen system library. The language was made to enforce a number of simplifying programming constraints that foster good software engineering in the design of applications that it produces. The purpose of the implementation of this experimental language is firstly to see if a connectionless iconic programming language in this style is possible, viable and scalable for general purpose problem solving, and then to find its implications for how users must think about programming and software design to use this system well.