PWCT: a novel general-purpose visual programming language in support of pervasive application development

Visual programming languages (VPLs) are inevitable tools to attract more people to the programming world. In this article, a novel VPL—programming without coding technology (PWCT)—is introduced. The main objective behind developing this tool was to create a general-purpose VPL that also possesses textual languages’ capabilities. PWCT is a language that can be used to develop similar programs to the ones developed in C++ or Java for example. As the name indicates, PWCT requires no coding at all. A person only needs to know the basic programming concepts to be able to use the tool. PWCT has many attractive features and can be used to develop applications of different domain including pervasive computing. PWCT has been launched as a Sourceforge project, which currently has more than 240 K downloads for the tool and over 22 M downloads for the samples and tutorials. A staggering number of programs were developed in PWCT all over the world. This article focuses on the core aspect of the tool. In addition, a number of studies are carried out to evaluate the usability and productivity of the tool. Feedback from developers and results from the studies indicate that PWCT is a very appealing, competitive, and powerful language that can be used in developing pervasive and mobile computing applications.

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