Why use a language in a point-and-click world?
There’s no question that graphically-based modeling systems are very popular. If you’re trying to complete a modeling project in 3 days, the first-day ease-of-use afforded by such packages may be attractive. But if you’re doing a more extensive modeling project, sooner or later you’ll reach a point at which you must provide a detailed procedural description of how one or more components of your system really works. For example, your system may be computer-controlled and have the ability to react to a variety of inputs in complex ways. Describing complicated procedural behavior is hard to do using purely graphical tools – a bit like kissing through a screen door. In contrast, SLX’s descriptive capabilities are virtually unlimited. When you know what you want to say, typing a few lines of code can be much easier than fighting with a poorly designed graphical system which is ill-suited for the task at hand. In addition, characterizing SLX as simply a language can be very misleading. If yo
