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Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

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Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#41

Post by tikimcfee »

juliusgeo wrote: post #38
tikimcfee wrote: post #28

Can I throw my hat in the ring? I’ve been working on this for.. a long time. AR VR iOS and macOS app for arbitrary code rendering in 3D space. Terminal like rendered glyph by glyph means perfect control over ever mesh and texture. The iOS demo is fun. You can walk around your code like an art museum, draw lines of executed traces, and perform visual hierarchical search. https://github.com/tikimcfee/LookAtThat

Wow, this looks very impressive. Going to check it out. Is there any plan to support languages other than Swift? I’m assuming that has quite a few technical hurdles associated.

Thank you very much, and absolutely! My hope is to convert to a treesitter implementation instead of the SwiftSyntax direct parser. There’s a file filter in there that can be turned off to load any particular file up for viewing, but the analysis stuff won’t work of course.

The tracing is more complicated. SwiftTrace is a bit tangly, and I’m still trying to think of a way for folks to “drop in” something to their code base to produce a structured set of traces. There’s a file-backed array that is is used to read compacted run logs, so as long as I can can get the format right, it should work for most cases. I even experimented with a syntax rewriter to insert logs!

What languages do you use? What would you like to see supported?

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#42

Post by simse »

simse wrote: post #21
vdievsowgdj wrote: post #2

just look at what IDEs that runs exclusively on ios are like: crap. nobody invest into a closed platform. i expect jetbrains to came up with something marvelous for ar/vr, but it will run on the upcoming version of Microsoft or HP glasses. you know, the only ones today that works just like an external monitor without a locked in ecosystem like apple or facebook. the silly apps and games and such will net millions tho…

Totally. Any iOS, or in this case realityOS, IDE would necessarily have to be remote only to actually be useful.

edit: visionOS not realityOS

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#43

Post by omeze »

tikimcfee wrote: post #30
omeze wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flame-baity but honestly what Id also expect. No one is going to invest in developing IDEs for this thing to rival VS Code or whatever if Apple wants a stranglehold on its ecosystem. Maybe there will be extensions to existing editors since people can ise it as a display extension for their macs. We didn’t see this happen on windows with game dev and the quest though.

I mean.. I’ve been doing exactly this for a while, and I fully plan on releasing something when I can actually find the time to superhero it to completion or find help. https://github.com/tikimcfee/LookAtThat

This is very cool!

I was thinking of a VS code extension that lets me put files or directories “physically” on my desk. Itd be emulating the way that I read text books. Instead of keeping notes and bookmarks physically in the book I could drop sticky notes that represent files directly on my desk and show a preview by by just shifting my eye focus to the AR/VR note.

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#44

Post by tikimcfee »

omeze wrote: post #43
tikimcfee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean.. I’ve been doing exactly this for a while, and I fully plan on releasing something when I can actually find the time to superhero it to completion or find help. https://github.com/tikimcfee/LookAtThat

This is very cool! I was thinking of a VS code extension that lets me put files or directories “physically” on my desk. Itd be emulating the way that I read text books. Instead of keeping notes and bookmarks physically in the book I could drop sticky notes that represent files directly on my desk and show a preview by by just shifting my eye focus to the AR/VR note.

Wow this is an awesome use case I hadn’t thought of and it makes so much darn sense! In fact, the APIs include automatic plane detection, which means being able to look at your table, directly in front of you and “popping a note down“ shouldn’t be too terribly impossible! In fact I can see you doing things like duplicating snippets of code, and putting the scratchpad next to your monitor, your keyboard, or anywhere else you would stick a stickie. What a great idea, I hope you don’t mind if I ruminate on it some more!

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#46

Post by juliusgeo »

tikimcfee wrote: post #41
juliusgeo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this looks very impressive. Going to check it out. Is there any plan to support languages other than Swift? I’m assuming that has quite a few technical hurdles associated.

Thank you very much, and absolutely! My hope is to convert to a treesitter implementation instead of the SwiftSyntax direct parser. There’s a file filter in there that can be turned off to load any particular file up for viewing, but the analysis stuff won’t work of course. The tracing is more complicated. SwiftTrace is a bit tangly, and I’m still trying to think of a way for folks to “drop in” something to their cod…

Thanks for the reply! The main reason I ask that is I primarily use Python and Julia, which have pretty decent tracing abilities but there are still a lot of rough edges when it comes to visualizing those traces. Particularly with Python, the default tracing packages such as cProfile are quite lacking in terms of support for visualizing and exploring the output of the profiling (most likely by design, but still frustrating nonetheless). It's necessary to bring in Snakeviz for visualizing, and it is quite good, but the HTML UI that it is run has very limited options when it comes to distinct ways of visualizing the data.

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#47

Post by giantg2 »

I've heard about people using Unity for other AR/VR stuff. Not sure if they might expand to include it. I've played around with Unity a little bit. I guess we have to see if Apple is using it's own proprietary stuff (as usual), or if they will be closer to the industry standards, or at least providing support for including their language in existing IDEs.

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#48

Post by LordDragonfang »

tikimcfee wrote: post #41
juliusgeo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this looks very impressive. Going to check it out. Is there any plan to support languages other than Swift? I’m assuming that has quite a few technical hurdles associated.

Thank you very much, and absolutely! My hope is to convert to a treesitter implementation instead of the SwiftSyntax direct parser. There’s a file filter in there that can be turned off to load any particular file up for viewing, but the analysis stuff won’t work of course. The tracing is more complicated. SwiftTrace is a bit tangly, and I’m still trying to think of a way for folks to “drop in” something to their cod…

If you're taking suggestions for languages, support for javascript+html would also be a nice addition, since it's the de facto common language at this point.

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#49

Post by jones1618 »

I'd want a 3D node editor interface much like Blender's texture or geometry creation interface. The nodes would be 3D objects (cubes, cylinders, etc) and nested groups of objects w/ physical ports that could be wired together.

Nodes would include class/object/method nodes w/ code blocks. So, an important AR/VR UX feature would be the ability to collapse/dive-into nodes & groups of nodes much like code-outliners in 2D IDEs.

Another awesome feature would be the ability to affix dials/gauges and other displays to the outside of nodes & node groups that would provide indicators of the unit's state: How "full" is a collection node, how often/frequently was this node invoked, the health of the node (errors, exceptions, slow-execution times), etc.

Re: Ask HN: What would an IDE built for the Apple Vision Pro look like?

#50

Post by tikimcfee »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #48
tikimcfee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much, and absolutely! My hope is to convert to a treesitter implementation instead of the SwiftSyntax direct parser. There’s a file filter in there that can be turned off to load any particular file up for viewing, but the analysis stuff won’t work of course. The tracing is more complicated. SwiftTrace is a bit tangly, and I’m still trying to think of a way for folks to “drop in” something to their cod…

If you're taking suggestions for languages, support for javascript+html would also be a nice addition, since it's the de facto common language at this point.

I’m with you 100% here. I don’t have support for syntax yet, and I’m going to see what I can do about that soon. The rendering support is all there, at least, and I need to make sure I call that out too. Thank you for the ping! Please feel free to keep in touch with other ideas or brain dumps!
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