Graphical programming isn't new. Yet significant improvements in visual architecture, development-tool user interfaces, and compilation to hardware and software targets have moved graphical programming from a novelty to a significant portion of the development tools market.
The number of tools within this space includes the Object Management Group's (OMG) Unified Modeling Language (UML), Measurement Computing's Software, and National Instruments' LabVIEW.
Not Window Dressing
Graphical programming often is called model-based design, where the model (or application) is presented in a graphical format. This significantly differs from graphical user interface (GUI) development environments like Eclipse or Microsoft Visual Studio. These platforms can host graphical programming systems.
Click here to download the PDF version of this entire article.