#cb-maps

[savagegardensprogramming]

I expect great things from CB-Maps. I believe it is the one. The one to break us away from the 1st dimension and guide us into the 2nd dimension.

[savagegardensprogramming]

I do love CB-Maps, I conceived it several years back but I never took it seriously until about a year ago next month. Fell in love with it because it has science behind it. Good strong science.

[savagegardensprogramming]

CodeBlock Maps - Introduction

Take a look at Exhibit A – Its what I call a Code Block-Map. This is my crown jewel. A graphical code construct suitable for management level programming. Sub-Level 2 of SavageGardens.

Exhibit B is the sketch programming language. Its what the bright minds at MIT are working on. Its a toy. Its impractical for professional use. I am well aware as to why. I conceived something similar almost 30 years ago. I bet I wasn’t the only one.

Exhibit C is the book I was first taught programming. This book takes the flow chart approach. It does not want you take write a single line of code until you’ve drawn a full flowchart of your program. Its a painstaking approach because it takes a long time to draw a flowchart compared to the functionality you get from it. Very good for learning flow of logic but impractical for professional uses. This is the reason why the sketch programming language is what it is. It sits on the same situation. It takes too long to draw. It also takes too long to drag and drop. Mind you in the future we will have eye tracking and dragging & dropping will be done at a fraction of a second. Still, this kind of language will remain impractical.

I been sitting on this situation for literally decades. My break thru was to break out of the box. Stop using graphics to represent details. Graphical code constructs are not suitable for representing details. Lets look at sketch again Exhibit B. You see how they mapped a graphical representation to individual code constructs. One graphical representation for the if statement. Another one for a repeat loop. Another one for an individual function call such as play, stop, set volume, etc. Those are details.

Stepping out of the box for me was when I realized that graphical code constructs are good for representing big pictures. Managing the big pictures. Metaphorically speaking. Step away from the forest and look at the landscape. At a higher level you can move a whole mountain from the right to the left, Put the lake right next to it. Have the river move down from the lake and curb to the left. Put a small town situated at the curb of river. And finally mark an X on the mountain where Smaug the dragon hangs out. The point is managing the big picture items as opposed little details.

If mind-maps and flowcharts got together. CodeBlock Maps would be their child. CodeBlock maps is basically a map of blocks of code. What it maps out is flow of logic. Let rectangles represent a block of code. The code can be it as simple as adding two numbers together. Or as complex an AI algorithm with millions of lines of code. Then interlink these rectangles indicating flow of logic. That is it. LISP is just commas and parenthesis. CodeBlock maps is just rectangles and lines.

Exhibit D CodeBlock Maps are made up of individual CodeBlock Cells. A rectangle is referred to as a cell. Anyways here are the individual parts of a code block cell. Most of it is verbiage. I would say the only thing that translates into code is the fact that its a cell, the interlinks and the type descriptor.

Exhibit E. There are different verbiage requirements depending on the situation. Here I have enumerated them all. But at the core they are all the same fundamental construct. A rectangle interlinked with lines.

Exhibit F is syntax diagrams represented as a code block map. Good for representing recursive descent graphically. Note that CodeBlock Maps are about making code look pretty. It turns out that beauty has a practical use in code comprehension. I suspect women will enjoy programming in SavageGardens.

In SavageGardens I have designated code block maps as a sub-language for code management but mind you its quite capable on its own. It is touring complete. As simple and powerful as LISP. Its good for encapsulation. Good for divide-n-conquer. Good for abstraction. It fullfills the goals I have set out for SavageGardens. It exploits the brain functions of memory recall. It is 2 dimensional. It is graphical in nature. Good for code comprehension. Good for code navigation. Does not hinder code efficiency. Not so good for code articulation but three out of four is not bad. It does work well with other languages. Hence good for management.