PING Language Programming Principles: A Visual Logic Structure Programming Approach for Modular Function Control and Execution Tracking

To meet the development requirements for the complex algorithms with a gradually clear mathematical model and technical routes, frequent modifications and updates for the workflows, and long exploratory cycles, this article conducted preliminary research on a new programming idea based on a visual logic structure - PING programming language. At this time, PING language is a proof-of-concept and is compatible with the C/C++ language. PING language took function modules as the basic programming units. It utilized various explicit execution orders and invoked relationships between function modules to construct the static software logic structure network, implemented a visual scheduling and execution mechanism for function modules, and employed variable symbol table technology to achieve shared variable value transfer. The PING programming language could explicitly represent the overall static logic structure of software during the software programming stage. During the software running stage, the function pointer was used to centrally invoke the function modules, which facilitated the dynamic tracking of the function modules' execution workflows and automatically detected redundant logic branches and untested paths within the software. It had great significance in improving the development, debugging, testing, and maintenance efficiency of interpretable intelligent software, and even in developing machine autonomous programming systems.