Visual methods in real-time programming

It is widely accepted that visual programming techniques can offer increased productivity and reduced costs during the programming stage of real-time systems development, and to a lesser extent at other phases in the system development life cycle. It is this author's belief, however, that while visual programming languages have much to recommend them, their current usage is erroneous. Current trends will prevent visual programming languages from being successfully applied to complex real-time systems, and in the development of correct systems. A case is presented for visual methods of real-time system development, that recognize visual programming as a single component of a more complex development method; the paper concludes by briefly describing one such method.