PWCT Features – More

Visual Programming is not new; we already have many visual programming languages (VPLs). These

VPLs tends to use different methods to create programs, but most of these languages share the Drag-And-

Drop method beside one of the programming paradigms (Imperative, Procedural, Object-Oriented, Event-

Driven, Declarative, Functional, Data-flow, etc). And if the visual language generates text based source

code, you will find that most of the VPLs support code generation in one language. And if the visual

language is General-Purpose, you may find its real applications seems to be in one domain. Also most of

the VPLs are used for high level programming tasks.

PWCT is developed to be General in many ways :-

General in scope (Low Level/High Level , Simple/Large and different programming domains).

Support different programming paradigms

Support code generation in different text based programming languages

To provide this for PWCT developers, PWCT is designed as an open architecture that can be extended by

adding new components, the components are developed using simple designers and simple scripting

language designed for this purpose.

PWCT is developed to be Practical choice for expert programmers :-

PWCT don’t use Drag-And-Drop, PWCT uses automatic visual representation generation and

update based on data entered to forms, and this allows us to use the keyboard to program faster

than typing text based code when we implement algorithms. When someone says “Visual

Programming is slow; using mouse is not quick as using the keyboard” tell him that this problem is

already solved in the PWCT world.

PWCT uses standard GUI controls (Treeview, Label, Textbox, Checkbox, Editbox, etc) and

organize the user interface in different screens where we see each screen alone instead of using one

screen for everything. This help in performance, managing complexity and the ability to play

programs as movies where the user can concentrate on what is going on.

PWCT is ready for console applications like (Quick tasks, Servers, etc) and is also ready for GUI

development, PWCT comes with a form designer that can get the information from the steps tree

and interaction page to display the window controls then give the developer the ability to design

the user interface, after that the steps tree and interaction pages are updated to reflect what has been

done using the form designer.

PWCT provide features like Cut/Copy/Paste/Search/Replace and working on multi steps at the

same time using the Goal Viewer

Fig. 1 Goal Viewer – Do operations on multiple steps at the same time

To open the goal viewer, from the “Goal” menu, point to “Goal Viewer Window”.

PWCT is developed to help novice programmers to learn programming concepts :-

Avoid Syntax Errors

Learn by exploring the environment

The user interface is language independent, could be (English, Arabic,etc)

Can play programs as movies to learn how to create the program step by step

Can run programs in the past to get better understanding of what is going on.

Many Samples, Tutorials & Movies from Hello World program to complete applications.

Fig. 2 Steps Tree in English and Arabic languages at the same time.

Fig. 3 Samples Manger from the Help menu

Fig. 4 Samples Manager

Using the samples manager you can download samples and find any sample using the search.

When you open any sample, you can use the “Play as Movie” feature to see step by step how to create

this sample using PWCT.

Fig. 5 The Time Machine – Play as Movie feature.

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