archives

DRAKON-Erlang: Visual Functional Programming

Functional programming is based on useful and practical ideas. Unfortunately, there is a problem with how functional programs look. They are often hard to read.

Improving the visual appearance of functional programs can make them easier to understand. One way of doing it is to combine some existing functional language with a graphic notation.

DRAKON-Erlang is an attempt to do so. This hybrid language can be described as Erlang that uses DRAKON for flow control.

Each of these two technologies have been successful on their own.

DRAKON was developed within the Russian space program. It was used in Buran, Sea Launch and other space projects. The strong point of DRAKON is that it makes algorithms easier to understand by relying on ergonomics.

Erlang is one of the most widely used functional languages. It started its path in telecom and later spread out to many other industries. Erlang is well known for its simplicity, reliability and built-in support for concurrent programming.

Read more: http://drakon-editor.sourceforge.net/drakon-erlang/intro.html