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Visual scripting vs regular coding

excreationist

Married mouth-breather
Joined
Aug 28, 2000
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Australia
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Probably in a simulation
I think the most well known visual scripting languages are Scratch and Blueprint.

Scratch is suitable for children from the ages of 8 or so. Here is an intermediate level example:
scratch-if-else.png


I like it a lot. I used it to make a prototype game for a university subject called "Playcentric Game Design".

Then there is Blueprint which is used in the Unreal game engine. Here is a "simple" example:

blueprint1.png

Blueprint allows very confusing structures:
tumblr_p5pcjuX8RV1wp4jg6o1_1280.png


More:

In the Unreal engine you've either got to use Blueprints or C++ (or both). For a university subject I was having trouble keeping up with the lecturer doing a Blueprint example. When you miss a step it can be hard to catch up (so I quit the subject).

Anyway I find Blueprint to be extremely overwhelming but find C sharp (in the Unity game engine) to be straight forward (though I avoid things like delegates and "scriptable objects"). It looks like it would be harder to debug Blueprint...

I also have aphantasia which means I can't picture anything in my mind. Maybe that somehow is responsible for my problems with Blueprint.
 
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I was just thinking some more. In 2019 I was hospitalized for a manic episode. Since I wasn't improving I had 6 ECT sessions. Since then I've had major issues with working memory (and "retrieval fluency" which is about memory access). After leaving the mental ward I had a lot more issues with PHP so I couldn't keep working. With C sharp (in my Unity game) I can look at small parts of it at a time but with Blueprint I think you've got to focus on more of it to try and understand what's going on. I also mostly don't need to worry about understanding other people's code and I make my code as straight forward and well named as possible.
 
The problem here is that the graphical stuff becomes very limiting on larger programs.

We keep having innovations that supposedly allow non-programmers to program. No, they allow non-programmers to make simple things and to make houses of cards.
 
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