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Microsoft TouchDevelop

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Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#41

Post by darkmighty »

orf wrote: post #5

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long long time. If I remember correctly Microsoft released something similar for Windows Phone but the UI was really clunky. This version (?) is amazing though, so much better. I've just spent 10 minutes playing around and building a simple app sat on my sofa, I highly recommend spending a little bit of time using this.

There's very good precedence too with Scratch and it's derivative Android App Inventor (currently App Inventor 2), but it's nice that this is platform independent! (it does miss out on some cool things that are platform dependent, like fiddling with sensors and communication)

https://scratch.mit.edu/

http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/

GUI-oriented programming has much to offer and I'm excited in developments in this area, not only for kids but as a general enabler of coding without a large learning period.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#43

Post by pjmlp »

rifung wrote: post #20
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.

Microsoft Research is full of very cool projects like Singularity, Drawbridge, Midori, Barrelfish, Bascule, M#, F#, F*. Also sponsoring Haskell and OCaml.

And these are only the subjects I personally care about.

.NET compilation to native code via MDIL (Windows 8) and .NET Native, F#, Windows containers are some examples of work that started at Microsoft Research.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#45

Post by mmoskal »

Isamu wrote: post #35

Very interesting! So the language looks similar to Scratch and Blockly, but targeted to mobile web. I would like to see a comparison overview. Anyone have a link to a published paper? This is from Microsoft Research so I would expect there to be one, eventually, relating this to similar efforts.

This paper: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/moskal/pdf/bey... describes the basic idea behind integrating an IDE, GitHub-like collaboration, and an app store.

The main thing about the interface it's that it's touch-optimized and has this unique semi-structured editor, where the expressions (as opposed to statements) are edited token by token, and not as a tree. This was proven to work better on touch-devices.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#46

Post by frik »

rifung wrote: post #20
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.

It might be an evolution of Microsoft Small Basic - an easy programming language for beginners with a simple IDE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Small_Basic

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#47

Post by mmoskal »

neals wrote: post #12

Little buggy on desktop chrome, but may that is not the intended browser? http://i.imgur.com/QVzTlqD.png

Chrome is certainly one of the supported browsers, and we do use TouchDevelop on desktop all the time. This is actually fixed in our beta version, see https://www.touchdevelop.com/app/beta

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#48

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #16
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 :)

Which is true, but I've been thinking for a while there's a very interesting company trying to get out from under the dead weight of the old 90s and 2000s era MS.

A single product won't change the culture, but it's obvious the ship is being steered in a different direction. Even if it takes a while to change course, it's obvious cool new stuff is happening.

I only hope MS can sort out its management culture to take full advantage of the cool new stuff.

Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop

#50

Post by frik »

daok wrote: post #27
neals wrote: post #12

Little buggy on desktop chrome, but may that is not the intended browser? http://i.imgur.com/QVzTlqD.png

Chrome is definitely in Microsoft intended browser. Most of the dev are using Chrome at Redmond while developing.

MS should do more dogfooding of their IE11/Edge "F12" developer tools. "F12" is years behind Chrome&Firefox dev tools.
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