Comparison of flow-based versus block-based programming for naive programmers

There is general agreement that most people should have some programming ability, whether to investigate the vast amount of data around them or for professional purposes. Visual Programming Languages comprise two broad categories: Flow-based, functional programming or Block-based, imperative programming. However, there has been a lack of empirical studies in the visual programming domain to evaluate the relative benefits of the two categories. This research provides an empirical study to analyze the effects of the comparison between Flowbased and Block-based paradigm, to determine which of the two representations is easier for non-programmers or novice programmers. Each user is given a random, simple problem to program in a random environment. Both of the environments, Flow-based and Block-based are designed to be as similar as possible to make the comparison useful. The results indicate that Flow and Block are equivalent environments for non-programmers or novice programmers in terms of usability and effectiveness.