Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language • Hacker News Board

Re: Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

#41

Post by Optimal_Persona » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:30 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #27

These things have been done in Labview, and it's hard to get anywhere. It's also been done in sound/music generation programs, with Max [max] as a (the?) granddaddy. While you can get things done, it quickly becomes messy too. Does it look good? I don't think so. [max] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software)

IMO the visual wire/node paradigm of Max/MSP and Pure Data makes a lot of sense because it builds upon the "plug one box into another" interface that electronic music hardware follows, and because it can mirror electronic circuit layouts. I find it far easier to follow complex signal flows (especially with animated realtime diagrams showing numeric values in real time) in a visual layout vs. static text blocks.

Also more recent versions of Max/MSP have "mc" (multi-channel connections so you don't have to create separate wires/nodes for multiple identical signals) and text-based programming nodes with "~gen" and JavaScript.

Re: Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

#42

Post by auggierose » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #6

Sure a fun project, but that neither looks good, nor is it easy to understand. Reminds me of Frege's notation on steroids.

I like the animations, though.

Re: Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

#43

Post by aapoalas » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #24

aapoalas wrote: post #19

If you like this, you may find automation project engineer work fun... or at least familiar. Function block diagrams are quite like this: There function blocks are connected together with wires, and the order of operations is defined by block order. Blocks themselves are like builtin functions in the engine, or they can also be composites. The diagram is executed once per control cycle and generally (if no jump block…

Like PLCs or something similar?

Yeah, exactly. I'm not too clear on how PLC, DCS (which is what I do), and others relate to each other but function block diagrams are used in both (according to Google anyway).

Re: Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

#44

Post by pyinstallwoes » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 8:03 PM UTC

tromp wrote: post #2

> Technically the language is Turing complete at this point, but will be excruciatingly laborious to use, violating my design rule #2. I stopped at step #1 with my Lambda Diagrams [1]. The bottom of that page links to all other graphical lambda calculus notations I know of (just added this one). [1] https://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html

Looks like Sumerian cuneiform to me, cool.

Re: Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

#45

Post by shove » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 8:51 PM UTC

Nobody gave a shout out to Robot Odyssey yet?

Re: Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

#46

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:43 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #25

Something that always struck me about this sort of thing, or in similar games, is that it is only 2D and so rapidly becomes incredibly crowded with lines going everywhere. We code in a 2D nature (rows and columns) but the flow is non-euclidean I guess

It's a shame because in 3D you can do much much cleaner layout in general.

Re: Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

#47

Post by dogcomplex » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 10:22 PM UTC

Pffft, come back to me when these can all be auto-mapped to Factorio or Stardew Valley-esque metaphorical actions, then we'll talk

But no, seriously, this is super cool - I do honestly expect we're very close to diffusion-based image models being full programming suites (and compiling down to much more efficient representations, of course, but programming is abstracted for useful human understanding!)