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Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

app.getflowcode.io

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Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#51

Post by enbugger »

tonnydourado wrote: post #28

Sigh. Firstly, and to be fair, this is more for the comments than OP, can we please stop kidding ourselves? People have been trying to make tools to allow "non-developers" to code without coding since COBOL, and they all either failed, or end up requiring that users learned how to code anyway. Except maybe Excel. Secondly, this has some good ideas, but makes the same cardinal sin of, seemly, all visual programming to…

I'd love Excel where such visual language is used instead of their crap formula syntax. Image how powerful it could be

Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#52

Post by hermitcrab »

History shows that visual programming can work very well in particular domains (data wrangling, signal processing, 3d image rendering etc) but has never really been successful for general purpose programming.

A lot of the issues related to visual vs text based programming have been debated here many times. As someone with a foot in both camps, I tried to summarise the various arguments here:

https://successfulsoftware.net/2024/01/16/visual-vs-text-bas...

Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#53

Post by hermitcrab »

remon wrote: post #46

So far there are zero data points on the success side of the fence when it comes to visual programming. The exceedingly rare times I come across it professionally it's a toy project or something that's basically in the state of "We wish it was just code but we don't dare touch it".

>So far there are zero data points on the success side of the fence when it comes to visual programming.

What about Alteryx, Blender, LabView, Unreal Blueprint and any number of other node based tools?

Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#54

Post by beders »

Re: HTTP Flows.

As we know networks never fail, read timeouts aren't a thing and error handling is not necessary as networks never fail and read timeouts aren't a thing and error handling is not necessary as networks never fail and read timeouts aren't a thing...

Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#55

Post by mettamage »

beders wrote: post #54

Re: HTTP Flows. As we know networks never fail, read timeouts aren't a thing and error handling is not necessary as networks never fail and read timeouts aren't a thing and error handling is not necessary as networks never fail and read timeouts aren't a thing...

Yea! Just like how the electricity grid of an entire country is guaranteed to be operating every day. And if it wouldn't, then we'd be quick at finding out what the cause is.

Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#57

Post by gabigrin »

threecheese wrote: post #26

Looks very interesting. I am currently researching node-based developer tools and libraries, and after a quick look at your code I wonder why you chose to create your UI from scratch instead of using a diagramm-ish utility (react-flow and many others)? I know there are some tradeoffs with each, like one might be geared toward drawing, another for graph visualization, another for lots of nodes etc, and so maybe you di…

Hey, author here. Thanks!

When I started Flyde, the underlying visual programming language powering Flowcode, I went for DOM as it was the simplest solution to get something working. I was sure a rewrite to WebGL/Canvas would be needed to be performant, but we managed to render pretty complex flows and leverage the ever-growing React ecosystem. Also, react-flow was in its infancy when I started, but even later, as it evolved, I still prefer to have full control over the experience. I strongly believe that the editor and the ergonomics of the "language" are inseparable, and if you want to build something truly great, you have to control the experience end-to-end.

I do think one day WebGL/canvas might be required to take the editor to the next level. One example I always think of is this one - https://xai-primer.com/tool/ It's a great UX solution for nested flows (something Flowcode supports). But as long as I can stay with DOM, the better.

Re: deepwiki - thanks for that! very cool website and LLM usage

Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#59

Post by thenthenthen »

wasabi991011 wrote: post #48
remon wrote: post #46

So far there are zero data points on the success side of the fence when it comes to visual programming. The exceedingly rare times I come across it professionally it's a toy project or something that's basically in the state of "We wish it was just code but we don't dare touch it".

Node based programming is pretty common for visual effects, like shader graphs (Unity), animation (Houdini), colour grading (DaVinci), etc.

Puredata, Max/MSP for realtime audio/visuals, Touchdesigner

Re: Show HN: Flowcode – Turing-complete visual programming platform

#60

Post by Anduia »

mattfrommars wrote: post #44

We use an internal 'no code' tool to do complicated data transformation logic. Our flow has become so large and convoluted, it is extremely difficult to put feature and debugging is absolute nightmare. You have no idea how many times we had wished all this data transformation was in vanilla Java/Python. Our life would have been so much easier. But at this time, it is too large to ignore.

If it is an internal tool, why can't they add a flow that calls Java/Python?
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