Just to let you know, the name conflicts with Matrix TSL's Flowcode[0], which is for simpler embedded programming.
Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
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Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#12Reminds me a little of Node-Red, for me coding is just easier than connecting boxes but it would be cool if someone cracked the visual programming route.
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#13Let me know if you want to try to collaborate.
I'm working on the same idea, but I'm trying to take it several steps further by letting any syntactic programming language be rendered, edited, and run as no-code.
This is a response to my observation that the limit to the growth of these things is that they always have "meh" editors because the editor and the programming language are tightly coupled -- right now if there are ten visual programming languages there are ten different visual programming language editors.
This is probably the biggest reason these tools don't catch on professionally: you can't learn the editor tool and take that skill with you to a new language/project as you can with a text editor and syntactic languages. Fortunately this is the problem I have solved.
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#14IMO, Complexity is still best tackled with text. Low-code for lunch, spaghetti for dinner.
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#15Congratulation on the launch! I definitely see a future in visual scripting, the best candidate I have for my next project is https://luna-park.app/ but I'll be experimenting with FlowCode/Flyde. What use cases do you target with Flwocode? As I see here it seems general purpose.
Great reference! Even mentioned it on Flyde's launch on HN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39628575
We imagine 3 use-cases with Flowcode: - Non-developer, but technical roles (IT, Automation experts) using it as a more powerful and flexible alternative to n8n.io/make.com - Technical product managers using Flowcode to integrate AI-based flows into their product and collaborating on them with developers - Experienced developers building LLM-heavy (or any other async/concurrent heavy logic actually) looking to build faster flows
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#16I love your premise here. I think visual programming has such untapped potential even though it has been tried and tried and tried so I hope you crack the code a bit (lol). I think you're exactly right on the idea of "I just diagrammed all the control flow why can't I just push run". It's kind of crazy to introduce a point of failure (and a menial translation step) by writing code to match the diagram. Another huge b…
Author here. Thanks!
Lowering the barrier of collaboration is indeed a major goal for us. In the DRAKON analogy, Flowcode might help technical product managers collaborate with developers on LLM-heavy logic.
Re: vibe-coding - that matches our vision 100%. Let AI build the nodes while a human (even if heavily AI-assisted) oversees
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#17This is very cool! I’ve used workflow builders for AI-based workflows before, but the ability to add custom code as work blocks is incredibly useful. A great idea would be to include a CLI to visualize the existing code. It might not be trivial, but current-gen AI could help extract modules from the code.
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#18I just want to make an observation based from previous experiences.
These styles of programming environments are not new. We have seen many such tools in the past. I think they are useful (to an extent) when dealing with high-level compositions such as orchestrating a video pipeline, shaders, simple logic.
They start to fail very quick when you need to implement more advanced algorithms and processes that are not yet abstracted in reusable blocks. Needless to say, it is easier to write code at this point. Just less cognitive load and frankly the visual model does not help when you have a solid mental model - you can keep more information in your head in abstract forms than the eyes can scan and process.
I am lurking in the n8n community and I have noticed similar patterns. The more elaborate workflows are just not as robust as they could be if you write code - and they happen to be very difficult to maintain too and full of bugs.
Other than that... these types of framework have their place and as I said, overall I think they are useful as long as they are used in the right way.
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#19IMO, Complexity is still best tackled with text. Low-code for lunch, spaghetti for dinner.
Agree. My understanding of why such visual node programming model exists, is because it is easier to sell to non-technical CEO. What's funnier is that this tool targets back-and developers. I don't know any BE dev who would prefer this over plain text programming.
Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform
#20I just want to make an observation based from previous experiences. These styles of programming environments are not new. We have seen many such tools in the past. I think they are useful (to an extent) when dealing with high-level compositions such as orchestrating a video pipeline, shaders, simple logic. They start to fail very quick when you need to implement more advanced algorithms and processes that are not yet…
It’s all about using the right tool for the job. In control systems I have seen nightmares of for loops and if then conditions replaced by a skilled practitioner to a beautiful block diagram that solved the problem and illustrated to the reader the form of the solution.