Programming software for complex robotic systems requires powerful tools that allow the programmers to focus on the functionality of their application without getting lost in low-level details (communication software, operating systems, etc), while guaranteing robustness, flexibility, and efficiency. In previous works a software integrating system called NEXUS was presented that achieves these characteristics. This paper presents a visual programming tool called BABEL that fulfills the NEXUS specifications and in addition exhibits multilanguage and multidistribution features. It decouples the OS, communication network, and hardware-dependent parts of the modules of the application from their intended functionality.