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Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

#321

Post by ttoinou »

kilon wrote: post #319
ttoinou wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example ? (And I didn't say one couldn't branch or stop the execution flow)

Two materials combined to one over a 3d surface where instead of mixing in certain areas you can have one or the other depending on a texture transparency acting as a mask. Or a gradient color customized to act as a bit mask with one and off values in the colors of black and white. Non continuous data in sound can be midi or any form of modulation source like a square wave that can also act as a bit and tons of other…

Ok so theses VPL have 2 primitives : 2D texture (a bit mask is a 2D texture) and 3D object / sound samples and MIDI stream. Can you generate an image from sound samples ? Can you create 3D objects particles from MIDI stream ?

Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

#322

Post by kilon »

ttoinou wrote: post #321
kilon wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two materials combined to one over a 3d surface where instead of mixing in certain areas you can have one or the other depending on a texture transparency acting as a mask. Or a gradient color customized to act as a bit mask with one and off values in the colors of black and white. Non continuous data in sound can be midi or any form of modulation source like a square wave that can also act as a bit and tons of other…

Ok so theses VPL have 2 primitives : 2D texture (a bit mask is a 2D texture) and 3D object / sound samples and MIDI stream. Can you generate an image from sound samples ? Can you create 3D objects particles from MIDI stream ?

I use blender, Blender has multiple VPLs that each specialize in one area. Texture, Material and Compositor. Blender VPLs are fully upgradable with Python code that allows the creation of new nodes . This allowed developers to create new VPLs using animation and modeling nodes. So even though Blender VPLs are not meant to be used as generic languages however there is already the API in place to allow this essentially exposing the entire Python scripting interface as nodes.

Reaktor I do not know if it supports 3d physics particles , but you could do what you ask for from blender. Blender supports midi for controlling animation.

Blueprints on the other hand are a generic VPL and can do anything you describe. It's also the best choice because Unreal excels at real time graphics.

Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

#323

Post by ttoinou »

kilon wrote: post #322
ttoinou wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so theses VPL have 2 primitives : 2D texture (a bit mask is a 2D texture) and 3D object / sound samples and MIDI stream. Can you generate an image from sound samples ? Can you create 3D objects particles from MIDI stream ?

I use blender, Blender has multiple VPLs that each specialize in one area. Texture, Material and Compositor. Blender VPLs are fully upgradable with Python code that allows the creation of new nodes . This allowed developers to create new VPLs using animation and modeling nodes. So even though Blender VPLs are not meant to be used as generic languages however there is already the API in place to allow this essentially…

Cool ! Thanks for the info, I have to check this out, looks interesting :)

Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

#324

Post by _Robbie »

worldsayshi wrote: post #106
nzonbi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been working on xol, a graphic based programming language. xoL is a graphic based programming language. It represents programming concepts with graphics instead of text. It is product of a long, painstaking design effort, to get an optimal graphical presentation of programs. A good description of it is available in this blog post: http://lignixz.github.io/blog/posts/17/xoL_graphics_based_pr... A partially work…

It looks kind of similar to a dream project of my own. It's a project that I've promised myself to take up on one day. I started building a prototype in haskell, with front end in Gloss. Tried to get inspiration from functional reactive programming/modelling. I thought about using something like a prototype called Hydra (1) as a sort of runtime for evaluating graphs. Anyway, I really want to get back to it at some po…

I have been working on a visual programming language for Haskell: https://github.com/rgleichman/glance Currently, it uses Diagrams and Graphviz to visualize Haskell programs. Please email me since I think there is a lot we could discuss.

Re: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

#325

Post by IceDane »

DanBC wrote: post #283
IceDane wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being stuck with a really, really bad laptop for the past 4 years, I can't disagree more whole-heartedly. I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy, heh. Though I wish more time was spent on some tools to make them more memory efficient(I'm looking at you, scala and friends), that's just not how it is today. I just bought a new laptop with 32 gigs of ram, and hopefully that is future-proof for the next…

What was the laptop? And what were the 3 things that you found most annoying?

A bit late reply.. but the laptop was just the cheapest laptop I could buy before starting Uni, roughly 4 years ago. I just got my new laptop a couple of days ago, and the difference is incredible.

The other guy that replied to your comment is basically right. My old laptop had a measly 4GB of RAM, and opening multiple tabs in Chrome for documentation, running an editor, some development tools like REPLs etc, and I'd basically be out of RAM. I would literally listen to music on my phone because spotify consumed too much of my precious RAM, and I had to kill off tabs that I hadn't used for a while like it was Survivor, in order to keep my laptop from start swapping(which means everything grinds to a halt).

I even run a very minimalistic window manager and don't use IDEs like IntelliJ or anything.

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