OpenPLC is a good English introduction. You're right, the biggest downside to these programs is that support and documentation are not in English. The Outseal IDE gives you the option of setting it English, although error messages still get output in Indonesian. Flprog also allows you to switch to English within the IDE.
If you're willing to pay a little extra for hardware you could go with Allen Bradley and their Connected Components workbench software.
Former machine technician. I used to repair machines in factories. I’ve been lurking on hacker news for over a decade because I find the work of programmers fascinating, but my brain just doesn’t cope well with code. I do however, understand machines and control logic, so for me visual programming is a sweet spot.
Non-programmer here. I’ve long desired to program Arduino microcontrollers but haven’t had the ability and/or the patience to learn programming. I’m a very visual person and get confused if I have to keep more than a few lines of code in my head. Even if I understand how I want a signal to be processed into an action, when the flow chart in my head needs to be translated into text I get overwhelmed.
A solution arrived for me in the form of a number of visual arduino IDEs. Flprog, Outseal, and Open PLC. They all allow programming in ladder logic, and Flprog and Open PLC allows for function block programming. Ladder logic is useful for many tasks involving discrete I/O (Ex. A button latches a contact which turns on a relay which turns off a light and turns on a motor.) Function block programming has enabled me to perform more complicated functions like creating an HMI using a menu system displayed on an LCD connected via I2C. These are tasks that I wouldn’t have a chance of accomplishing without the complex arduino code being contained in graphical functions blocks which I can wire together and configure with a gui.
Prior to compilation, Flprog displays the raw arduino code in the arduino IDE, which gives me a chance to exam the actual code produced by my function block program. I find it to be very educational.
As a non-programmer, I have no idea if this embedded programming use case can be generalized to more complex programming tasks, but for my limited use case it’s been transformational.
As I was reading your comment I couldn't stop vigorously nodding my head in agreement at nearly everything you said, especially the part about it being hard giving up photography and excessive reading in order to pursue programming. I feel like I'm exactly at the point you were when you began you journey into programming. Thanks for leaving this comment!
I can't speak for esolyt, but he added value for ME as an avid Linux user who's never compiled from source and is eager to get his hands dirty. After I'm done writing this comment I'm going to visit those threads and comb the comments of those threads for information. No need to be hostile about a link list.
If you're willing to pay a little extra for hardware you could go with Allen Bradley and their Connected Components workbench software.