Block-based versus flow-based programming for naive programmers

There is wide consensus that most people should have some programming capability, whether to control the Internet of Things, or to analyse the world of data around them. While some people focus on teaching conventional text-based languages like Javascript or Python, there is evidence that visual programming languages are more accessible for naive programmers. Visual programming languages fall into two broad categories: block-based, imperative programming, or flow-based, functional programming. However there have not been empirical studies to evaluate the relative merits of the two categories. This paper describes a study of hundreds of random people via Amazon Mechanical Turk attempting to program some simple problems in one or the other of two environments designed to be as similar as possible, except for the choice of paradigm.