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Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

fmjlang.co.uk

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Re: Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

#11

Post by userbinator »

rdtsc wrote: post #6

I have seen visual dataflow languages and even worked on some of them. They usually work better in specific domains like stream processing, control systems, signal processing and such. Even then, once a "program" gets complex it can get tangled fast. A node with 3000 edges starts to look messy. There are some things you can do to fix it but then you just kind of wish to use a simple script. As for general computing,…

You may find this interesting: someone using DRAKON to model and simulate the 6502 CPU at the transistor level. He is, not surprisingly, Russian:

http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2208

(Russian) video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43zPp01i6So

Re: Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

#12

Post by Eli_P »

Visual representation for code has its own niches for certain.

The most newfangled thingy I've encountered is Ballerina[1], it's kind of text diagram convertible code, cloud-oriented. Looks cool; there are some codes on github[2].

But anyways, I think it may be worthy as a domain-specific environment only. Because as a general-purpose language, visual languages are claimed to have improved perceptible difficulty, but in general case, they don't.

Try to define perceptible difficulty, or search for implementations in code linters, I believe it's always subjective, like max lines of code per function. The true code representation is multidimensional and incomprehensible for a monkey brain, even if you'd made it look like a multi-layer Manhattan-like glowing graph.

[1] https://ballerina.io/philosophy/ [2] https://github.com/search?q=ballerina

Re: Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

#15

Post by bane »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #4

My first thought was “it’s Visual Lisp”. My second was that it reminded me of an old music tracker program called Buzz Tracker. It was a bitch to learn, but once you got a few concepts down, it was insanely powerful. It was also pretty unstable.

Sadly, the source to Buzz was lost and development stopped. A hacker community kept it going for quite a while. It's apparently been restarted.

http://jeskola.net/buzz/

Re: Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

#16

Post by ravenstine »

caymanjim wrote: post #10

The name of this language is stupid. It evokes violence, either via the bullet reference, or via the film of the same name. I'm not thin-skinned or even prone to political correctness, but I still find it slightly insensitive for no compelling reason. Then I read the author's explanation ( http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/Name.html ), which makes a comparison between lisp (the programming language) and stereotypes about…

> I'm not thin-skinned

Are you sure about that? The gay thing is weird, yeah, but you basically are thin skinned if the connection between bullets and violence is that bothersome to you. Most people aren't that bothered by references to violence; if they were then violent shows and movies wouldn't be the best-sellers they currently are. What if I wrote a useful library and called it "Bomb"? Would that be insensitive of me?

Re: Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

#17

Post by caymanjim »

ravenstine wrote: post #16
caymanjim wrote: post #10

The name of this language is stupid. It evokes violence, either via the bullet reference, or via the film of the same name. I'm not thin-skinned or even prone to political correctness, but I still find it slightly insensitive for no compelling reason. Then I read the author's explanation ( http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/Name.html ), which makes a comparison between lisp (the programming language) and stereotypes about…

> I'm not thin-skinned Are you sure about that? The gay thing is weird, yeah, but you basically are thin skinned if the connection between bullets and violence is that bothersome to you. Most people aren't that bothered by references to violence; if they were then violent shows and movies wouldn't be the best-sellers they currently are. What if I wrote a useful library and called it "Bomb"? Would that be insensitive…

I wouldn't have said anything about that if not for the gay bit. I thought about just deleting that part, but I'll let it stand.

Re: Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

#18

Post by drpixie »

ivanhoe wrote: post #9

Considering that I spend at least 30% of my work time in the command line I really have some doubts about these "text is obsolete" ideas.

Agree - looks largely like syntactic sugar. Fine if that what's you want but should be acknowledged as such.

Re: Full Metal Jacket: A visual dataflow language (2016)

#19

Post by gavinpc »

ravenstine wrote: post #16
caymanjim wrote: post #10

The name of this language is stupid. It evokes violence, either via the bullet reference, or via the film of the same name. I'm not thin-skinned or even prone to political correctness, but I still find it slightly insensitive for no compelling reason. Then I read the author's explanation ( http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/Name.html ), which makes a comparison between lisp (the programming language) and stereotypes about…

> I'm not thin-skinned Are you sure about that? The gay thing is weird, yeah, but you basically are thin skinned if the connection between bullets and violence is that bothersome to you. Most people aren't that bothered by references to violence; if they were then violent shows and movies wouldn't be the best-sellers they currently are. What if I wrote a useful library and called it "Bomb"? Would that be insensitive…

At least "Bomb" would be short. "Full Metal Jacket" is a dreadful name in every sense, worsened only by the author's cringeworthy backstory. To paraphrase the parent, it reeks of immaturity.

I "wouldn't hold that against" the tool if it had technical merit.

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