1. A computer-implemented system for building instrument or front panels, comprising: a computational device providing access to a graphical panel building application, where: the graphical panel building application generates a graphical user interface (GUI) for rendering and placing components on an instrument or front panel, where: at least one component on the instrument or front panel: directly corresponds with, and interacts only with, a section of code in a textual language program, displays input or output values for the textual language program during execution of the textual language program, and does not interact with or correspond with a graphical diagram, the textual language program includes code for the execution of one or more components on the instrument or front panel, and the instrument or front panel runs in a continuous mode of operation during the execution of the textual language program; and a display device in communication with the computational device, the display device displaying the GUI, the GUI: displaying the instrument or front panel, separately displaying the textual language program, and displaying in a window with the textual language program at least one control allowing a user to switch between threads of execution of the textual language program, the threads of execution comprising two or more of: an initialization procedure, a foreground task, a background task, a timed execution task, an event-driven execution task, and a termination procedure.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein there is a one-to-one correspondence between each of the components on the instrument or front panel to corresponding sections of code in the textual language program.