[OLPC-GSoC] Visual Programming Language Project

[Shahriar Haque]

Hello everybody,

I'm Shahriar and I'm a Computer Science student at Carnegie Mellon 
University, PA, USA. I intend to develop a Visual Programming language 
aimed at teaching programming concepts in a non-textual way using 
metaphors that are understood by children of any cultural background.

Most of us are visual learners and thus understand best information is 
presented to us in the form of pictures. In fact, even the toughest 
theoretical concepts of computer science cannot be taught without the 
aid of visual cues. EToys, a programming environment / language 
installed on XO Laptop, is a good example of the usage graphics to 
explain topics in sciences and mathematics. However, EToys is also bound 
to the restrictions of textual programming. One has to familiarize 
himself with the syntax in order to write and understand code. But every 
programmer knows that programming is not about syntax, it’s about 
problem solving.

The language I plan to develop will free the programmer from syntax and 
help him visualize key concepts of computing. There have been many 
attempts of developing data-flow languages. But most of them are 
commercial and targeted towards systems design in an industrial setting. 
The proposed language will be designed in a way so that it reinforces 
ideas about OOP, data-structures, software design models etc in a visual 
way. The end result will be a language which can parse the same diagrams 
drawn by programming instructors on white-boards and produce clean 
cross-platform applications.

If there are any mentors who will guide me in this project. Please let 
me know. I would be very grateful to work under your supervision.

Thanks

Shahriar