https://web.archive.org/web/20240702210034/https://unit.soft...
Not working for me...
Same on mobile. None of the captures seem to work after a domain parking notice in 2021. It partly worked on a computer.
Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
11–20 of 84 posts
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#12Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#13I discovered Unit in the latter half of 2022 and found it very interesting. I always loved Fusion and Houdini for the flow based programming aspects. I think in Houdini's case it is notable that is has such a long history it dates back to earlier research in visual computing... Anyway, I used Unit as an excuse to play with OBS and stream a bit... if you'd like to see a video of how I figured out some bits about how i…
Thank you for posting this! It confirms my suspicion that Unit is probably not reinventing the meaning of computation to match the new visual medium? But still quite interesting how it is laid out.
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#14I have seen dozens of these things and have made a few myself.
Beyond some specific use cases, they don't seem to scale cognitively. The tangle of connections is a problem. The previous HN link from @andsoltis has a better critique than me.
Don't get me wrong. Besides being experientially cynical about these things, I'm also firmly in the camp of "one more UI breakthrough, bro and we might crack it!"
This one has some deep design that definitely attempts to extend the state of the art but still struggles with that aforementioned problem.
TBH though, the coolest feature is that widget that focuses on what you are doing. There is something there with it, I'm just not sure what the "there" or "it" is, but I do know I like it.
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#15Looks promising. I would love to see a tool to convert existing programs to Unit. This readme gives a much better idea of how it works: https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit/blob/main/src/docs/star...
Looks like a fancy Ladder logic editor, which is how industrial PLCs (machine controllers) are normally programmed.
Example: https://github.com/leofds/iot-ladder-editor Fiddle: https://www.plcfiddle.com/
Real world: Siemens SIMATIC for S7 PLCs (this lets you interchange between an Assembly-like language and the visual Ladder logic): https://cache.industry.siemens.com/dl/files/395/18654395/att...
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#16I have seen dozens of these things and have made a few myself. Beyond some specific use cases, they don't seem to scale cognitively. The tangle of connections is a problem. The previous HN link from @andsoltis has a better critique than me. Don't get me wrong. Besides being experientially cynical about these things, I'm also firmly in the camp of "one more UI breakthrough, bro and we might crack it!" This one has som…
I spent a lot of time on this too, many years ago, including working on a language designed specifically for it, and my conclusion was that I couldn't find a way to make it work without making the visual representation "just a tool" for working with a textual representation, because we still need to be able to communicate about code in all kinds of context where a largely visual system would mean being forced to share screenshots, as well as being able to handle e.g. diffs and source control. And once you still need to know and understand and work with a textual representation it feels like a lot of the potential evaporates, and that made me gradually lose interest.
I'd love it if someone found a solution to that, but it feels like an intractable problem beyond some specific use cases as you say.
I really hope I'm wrong.
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#17This is quite comparable to the vision I had in 2012 for NuzzGraph, but there was no way I was going to realistically make any real progress given the complexity and my lack of experience at the time.
Also it was clearly a solution in search of a problem. I was a believer in the idea that graph databases would enable a new paradigm of application development in the way that relational databases did, and wanted to try to pioneer something. That was (so I thought) what college dropouts like myself in my early 20s needed to do to get ahead in tech, as I was only a mere data analyst at the time, with no connections to the tech industry, scraping by while living inside a garage.
It was a good exercise though and it somehow out of sheer luck caught the attention of Manning Publications as it likely came up in the search results for OrientDB. My project page included a sort of roadmap to integrate with OrientDB.
They signed me on as a co-author of the book OrientDB in Action as the other author(s) IIRC weren’t native English speakers and they needed one. The book was never released but a different author released a similar book without publisher backing which was good enough for OrientDB.
If a publisher ever approaches you to help write a book, no matter how ridiculous of a candidate you think you are, your initial response should always be yes. You don’t have any obligation to actually finish a book unless it’s in the contract. You won’t make a dime but you’ll get world-class training on writing technical documentation. They only required that I complete a draft of one chapter within a shorter timespan for the first phase.
https://code.google.com/archive/p/nuzzgraph/wikis
https://code.google.com/archive/p/nuzzgraph/wikis/NuzzGraphB...
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#18https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit/
Thanks. The linked site is dead.
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#19I have seen dozens of these things and have made a few myself. Beyond some specific use cases, they don't seem to scale cognitively. The tangle of connections is a problem. The previous HN link from @andsoltis has a better critique than me. Don't get me wrong. Besides being experientially cynical about these things, I'm also firmly in the camp of "one more UI breakthrough, bro and we might crack it!" This one has som…
I spent a lot of time on this too, many years ago, including working on a language designed specifically for it, and my conclusion was that I couldn't find a way to make it work without making the visual representation "just a tool" for working with a textual representation, because we still need to be able to communicate about code in all kinds of context where a largely visual system would mean being forced to shar…
That’s fine though? Ultimately everything you do on the computer is just a representation of bits being shuffled around. That doesn’t diminish its meaning or effective’s of a better user interface.
Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent a lot of time on this too, many years ago, including working on a language designed specifically for it, and my conclusion was that I couldn't find a way to make it work without making the visual representation "just a tool" for working with a textual representation, because we still need to be able to communicate about code in all kinds of context where a largely visual system would mean being forced to shar…
That’s fine though? Ultimately everything you do on the computer is just a representation of bits being shuffled around. That doesn’t diminish its meaning or effective’s of a better user interface.
The problem becomes if the form you're used to working with the code in is very different from the form you need to communicate about it in.
In practice every attempt I've looked at either become hard to communicate about the code in, or the visual aspect tends to end up just becoming a secondary visualisation of code that you still treat as textual first.
In the latter case, turning it into a better UI is an unsolved problem, because round tripping reliably between something readable as text and a meaningful visual representation is really hard.
As I said, I hope someone solves this, but most attempts aren't even pushing the boundaries into uncharted territory - a lot of attempts have been made over the years.