From the 7 November 2012 blog entry:
Two years ago Bestiario launched Impure – a free visual programming language aimed to gather, process and visualize information -. Around a year after the launch of Impure we began to think about how to take our platform to the new level, and the idea for Quadrigram was born: a data visualization solution oriented to businesses, analysts and journalists who need to add a layer of visual intelligence to their information. Development and design ensued, and earlier this year we soft-launched Quadrigram Beta as Bestiario’s first enterprise solution. Half a year later, we are now ready for our second big Quadrigram release.
Quadrigram is the first visual programming language developed specifically for creating and sharing interactive, in-browser data visualizations. We have built a library of hundreds of modules geared towards this purpose. These range from resources that gather data (either importing locally or working with APIs), to intermediate operators and controls (allowing for further filtering of data), to the visualization modules themselves (basic pie charts to 3D image networks).
Specifically, Quadrigram is also unique, in that it can process text, tapping into R to perform semantic and syntactic analysis or generate prediction models. Our advanced visualizers also allow users to create their own approaches to data visualization, by working with raw points, shapes, lines and other primitives, so that their not just limited to the conventional set of charts. Having a rich library with these modules already in place lowers the barrier of entry for non-programmers interested in making data visualizations, while at the same time enabling non-linear solutions to data processes. Additionally Quadrigram provides a way for programmers to prototype solutions faster.
Interesting (but not new) concept about programming.
Will work for:
- Data engineers, and
- Non-data engineers willing to learn the data analysis and the visual language
But will it work more generally?
There have been attempts to make programming accessible to business users. With mixed success.
COBOL comes to mind. Widely used programming language, just not by the average business user.
Or one of the many “visual/graphic” programming languages.
Do you see any of those in the top 20 at the TIOBE Programming Community Index for November 2012?
Quadrigram offers a quick way to do work, if you already know what to do.
How easy it will be to teach others the needed lessons, remains to be seen.