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Towards a Colimit−Based Semantics for Visual Programming

Jeremy Gibbons

Abstract

Software architects such as Garlan and Katz promote the separation of computation from coordination. They encourage the study of connectors as first-class entities, and superposition of connectors onto components as a paradigm for component-oriented programming. We demonstrate that this is a good model for what visual programming tools like IBM's VisualAge actually do. Moreover, Fiadeiro and Maibaum's categorical semantics of parallel programs is applicable to this model, so we can make progress towards a formal semantics of visual programming.

Book Title
Coordination Models and Languages
Month
apr
Pages
166–173
Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume
2315
Year
2002