Has anybody worked with Drakon Visual Language? (self.learnprogramming)

submitted 7 months ago by simplify3

I fell in love with Drakon yesterday - generates code in languages I don't even know how to use yet and is a fascinating visual language that started at the end of the Soviet Union - used for their last launch, developed over 11 years Post Soviet Union and it's been used by their current space agency ever since. I wonder if anybody has worked with it and what their thoughts are. I stole a slideshow someone made and synchronized it to Kevin MacLeod music at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2_vlXi6TzM just so I could learn it.. but I wonder if anybody else has worked with it to generate working code.

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[–]Franko_ricardo 1 point 7 months ago

I think visual generators like this can often hamper development. What happens when the generators code needs to be extended or modified..did it follow proper principles for the language? Did it add unnecessary boiler plate code?
These are important questions to ask when looking at a product like this or when a clueless manager thinks that its the next coming.
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[–]simplify3[S] 1 point 7 months ago

Very true. One of the things I love about Drakon is its ancient-ness. The head of it is a 78 year old Russian space engineer who has published several lengthy tomes on Drakon over the years in Russian.

I ran his 2012 book through Google Translate just so I could read it and on Russian forums, he's currently complaining about the difficulties his translation team is having getting to English. But I don't care about perfection and thankfully he's a fan of the whole copy-freely so if he finds out I translated it into English he won't mind.

I like that it creates State Machines in several languages. The code is regular code. If someone wants to tweak it afterwards, they can. But for rapid prototyping - to get something that works and quickly, it's a good thing.

Is it the next thing? Probably not. The developers took the project far more seriously than most people do - getting mathematicians, engineers, project managers etc all together to make the "Once And For All" Universal programming langauge. It launched several automated space vehicles successfully and it's in current use by the Russian space program.

It's main flaw is a lack of materials in other languages - it's a VERY RUSSIAN piece of software.. and its the love of this guy's life 40 years. That kind of devotion - that kind of brain-power put to something must count for something, I figure, so I'm giving it a shot.

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