Program Visualization for the Functional Paradigm

Abstract

One of the definitions for visualization is to give a visible appearance to something that has not it, thus it is easier to understand. Software visualization is defined as: "the use of crafts of typography, graphic design, animation and cinematography with modern human-computer interaction and computer graphics technology to facilitate both the human understanding and efective use of computer software". Also, program visualization is defined as "the visualization of actual program code or data structures in either static or dynamic form". We focus on functional programming paradigm here. We study crafts used to visualize functional program code and data structures. The study has been done over sixteen systems. These systems can be categorized in multiple ways. Although we do not want to make a new taxonomy, we differentiate among integrated development environmens, debuggers, teaching systems and visualization system. We have made a compilation of information about functional visualization systems (this is information is very dispersed). In general, most of systems are partial solutions to the main problem; the visualization of functional programs. Our aim is to find a more general solution.