A graphical abstract programming language

ABSTRACT

The current goals of programming are acheived through modularity and abstraction. Structured programs, which embody these two methodologies, have a natural representation through a graphical abstract programming language (GAL) which has been devised for this purpose. GAL represents language structures instead of strings of characters. The Graphical Abstract Language attempts to be closer to languages amenable to structured programming and design. Each template represents a structure and a program is constructed by the union of structures, and each of these is a structure of arbitrary complexity. The process template is the minimum, indivisible unit. As a result of the recursive nesting of structures the final product, i.e. a program, is a hierarchical structure.

REFERENCES

• 1: {Cheatham 81} Thomas E. Cheatham Jr., Glenn H. Holloway, and judy A. Townley -- Program Refinement by Transformation, IEEE, CH1627-9, 1981.
• 2: Derek Coleman, A Structured Programming Approach to Data, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, 1979
• 3: Donald E. Knuth, Computer-drawn flowcharts, Communications of the ACM, v.6 n.9, p.555-563, Sept. 1963 [doi>10.1145/367593.367620]
• 5: {Liskov 75a} Barbara H. Liskov - Data types and program correctness, AFIPS, Conference Proceedings, vol. 44, 1975.
• 6: D. L. Parnas, On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules, Communications of the ACM, v.15 n.12, p.1053-1058, Dec. 1972 [doi>10.1145/361598.361623]