Microsoft TouchDevelop • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#11

Post by codeshaman » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

Very nice. But why not have full keyboard support for the PC ?

I'm working on a very similar experimental editor for Clojure/lisp and my intention is to make it vi-like - navigate and perform the edits with the keyboard.

Some other ideas I'm experimenting with:

Customisable icons or even specific shapes for functions.

For example the function "show loading screen" can be represented as the actual visual screenshot of the loading screen.

The idea is to get rid of most of the syntax and leave only the user-defined names.

In 'interactive' mode, each form (block) can be executed and arguments can be entered right inside it.

Each function block could have a 'back side', where all the meta data about the function resides, like documentation and unit tests.

So visual programming is a new hot topic and there's a lot of stuff to explore in this area.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#12

Post by neals » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

Little buggy on desktop chrome, but may that is not the intended browser?

http://i.imgur.com/QVzTlqD.png

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#13

Post by thebouv » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

Pretty cool. Just sent this to my daughter to look at as well. She liked code.org's visual building, till it got in her way. This looks like you can dive into actual code if you want to. I think she'll like that.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#14

Post by tarr11 » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:42 PM UTC

thebouv wrote: post #13

Pretty cool. Just sent this to my daughter to look at as well. She liked code.org's visual building, till it got in her way. This looks like you can dive into actual code if you want to. I think she'll like that.

I might integrate this into the web based platform we use to teach kids. Very cool.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#15

Post by rileyt » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

Heads up: build failing + dependencies out of date.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#16

Post by dropit_sphere » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

alaskamiller wrote: post #4

I'm glad all the MSFT research initiatives are getting attention and/or the development stage. There's so much new amazing things to make the future so shiny and great. As Steve Jobs pointed out, MSFT's overall design and communications have and are still... astoundingly nerdy. Yet this new MSFT, one that notes they made something with WUV!, is such a departure from Micro$oft of yore. This is almost... dare I say, em…

>This is almost... dare I say, embryonic of an earnest attempt at something new?

While TouchDevelop is really cool, it's been a few years since it came out :)

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#17

Post by alexggordon » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

When I see tools like this, that allow children and adults to make things, using the same platform, I can only think Microsoft is it literally investing in the future. It's so easy to get wrapped up in what a tech company can produce now, or in a year that often times people forget about creating awesome tools. Tools last a lot longer than platforms or devices. While Minecraft is a slightly different example, its core success is simply that it is a creativity tool for all ages and skill levels. When I look at something like TouchDevelop, I see similarities. It's a tool that can let people create awesome things, easily. Something that oversimplifies things at first, but encourages and gives you the ability to push it farther if you desire.

Tech politics aside, kudos to you Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#18

Post by amadeusw » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

adamb_ wrote: post #2

Here's the landing page: https://www.touchdevelop.com/

They have some cool tutorial that introduce coding to newcomers. extraordinary Jetpack Jumper is my favorite! Every change to the code is annotated and explained with a short video

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#19

Post by M4v3R » Thu, May 14, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

This is awesome. And what's even more cool, that it seems to be localized to other languages! I'm a polish speaker, and when I launched one of the tutorials (Jetpack Jumper), not only the interface was translated, but even the intro video. I had friends that wanted to jump into programming but couldn't start because of the language barrier. That could turn out as a great tool for them!

Edit: Just noticed that they use Microsoft Translator for most of the tutorials, but still kudos to them for taking time and providing a proper translation in at least one of them.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#20

Post by rifung » Thu, May 14, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

alexggordon wrote: post #17

When I see tools like this, that allow children and adults to make things, using the same platform, I can only think Microsoft is it literally investing in the future. It's so easy to get wrapped up in what a tech company can produce now, or in a year that often times people forget about creating awesome tools. Tools last a lot longer than platforms or devices. While Minecraft is a slightly different example, its cor…

Seems like this was made by Microsoft Research. I'd argue Microsoft Research's very existence shows Microsoft is heavily invested in the future, more so than any other tech company as far as I know. Maybe besides IBM I dont know any other company that still funds research which isn't expected to have some relationship to the business side of things.