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λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language

media.mit.edu

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Re: λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language

#2

Post by LichenStone »

This is very cool. I've always been very disappointed that programming is so utterly dominated by the linear text format. It feels like so much potential for expression and feedback is getting left on the table, making use of our capacity to understand and work with spatialisation, patterns, sounds, colours, dynamics, etc would make a lot of sense.

Bret Victor's The Future of Programming and other talks come to mind - https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4

Re: λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language

#3

Post by agumonkey »

LichenStone wrote: post #2

This is very cool. I've always been very disappointed that programming is so utterly dominated by the linear text format. It feels like so much potential for expression and feedback is getting left on the table, making use of our capacity to understand and work with spatialisation, patterns, sounds, colours, dynamics, etc would make a lot of sense. Bret Victor's The Future of Programming and other talks come to mind…

I wish we had a smarter feedback loop between trying an idea (aka typing stuff) and reacting to results. Right now tdd or type inference doesn't really produce backward infered hints. Types do help exhaustive matching but you may be able to reverse trials output back to function types and conditionals.

Your editor would become a convergence game.

Re: λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language

#5

Post by tromp »

> To be able to draw programs that look visually appealing themselves, such that someone would want to put a frame around them and hang them on the wall.

I've done that with the predecessor function in lambda diagram form:

    ┬──────────
    ┼─────┬────
    ┼─────┼─┬──
    │ ──┬─┼ ┼ ┬
    │ ┬─┼─┼ │ │
    │ │ ├─┘ │ │
    │ ├─┘   │ │
    └─┤     │ │
      └─────┤ │
            └─┘
Lambda diagrams [1] are just a graphical output format for the pure lambda calculus though, and not a 2D programming language like Λ-2D.

[1] https://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html

Re: λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language

#7

Post by ilaksh »

agumonkey wrote: post #3
LichenStone wrote: post #2

This is very cool. I've always been very disappointed that programming is so utterly dominated by the linear text format. It feels like so much potential for expression and feedback is getting left on the table, making use of our capacity to understand and work with spatialisation, patterns, sounds, colours, dynamics, etc would make a lot of sense. Bret Victor's The Future of Programming and other talks come to mind…

I wish we had a smarter feedback loop between trying an idea (aka typing stuff) and reacting to results. Right now tdd or type inference doesn't really produce backward infered hints. Types do help exhaustive matching but you may be able to reverse trials output back to function types and conditionals. Your editor would become a convergence game.

Like SmallTalk?

Re: λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language

#8

Post by agumonkey »

ilaksh wrote: post #7
agumonkey wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we had a smarter feedback loop between trying an idea (aka typing stuff) and reacting to results. Right now tdd or type inference doesn't really produce backward infered hints. Types do help exhaustive matching but you may be able to reverse trials output back to function types and conditionals. Your editor would become a convergence game.

Like SmallTalk?

Smalltalk is live object but, afaik[0], the base interaction is still work for edit, work for test, work for resolution. I thought about making them one concept.. something like gradually pruning input spaces. test and code being somehow isomorphic (each failing test is implicitely mirrored in the working code).

[0] I only did a pharo MOOC and read some bits about smalltalk but considering the crowd, it's possible someone has an image with similar if not better ideas.

Re: λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language

#9

Post by ammanley »

Absolutely fascinating. I actually put a lot of time a while back into looking for a way to "draw" either a psudeo-code specification language, or just Python, on an iPad for "programming doodling" that could be scanned and parsed for later execution (spoiler: handwriting code outside of a drawing program is terrible). I love the idea of being able to bring computation closer to a hand-to-paper medium. Computer vision processing of code -> computation in an editor would be a dream. Please keep at this.
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