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Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

unit.software

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Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#51

Post by mdaniel »

WillAdams wrote: post #41
DrMiaow wrote: post #14

I 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 use such tools when I can, and am fascinated with the concept, since it evokes Herman Hesse's _Glass Bead Game_ (from his novel _Magister Ludi) which was a book I remember fondly from my youth. Advantages are: - discoverability --- it seems pretty easy to arrange all elements in a hierarchy and make them accessible via clicking/revealing - no syntax errors --- if things fit together/connect, then it should be a syn…

> - no syntax errors --- if things fit together/connect, then it should be a syntactically valid program

for consideration, one need not change the encoding medium to achieve this: JetBrains MPS https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/#:~:text=Why%20MPS> (Apache 2 licensed: https://github.com/JetBrains/MPS ) is like a middle ground between "flashing cursor in a textarea" and "drag-and-drop programming" and they alleged to have written their bugtracker (YouTrack) using MPS but they have since removed the citation in the footer so I don't know if it was true or is true

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#52

Post by mikhailfranco »

WillAdams wrote: post #41
DrMiaow wrote: post #14

I 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 use such tools when I can, and am fascinated with the concept, since it evokes Herman Hesse's _Glass Bead Game_ (from his novel _Magister Ludi) which was a book I remember fondly from my youth. Advantages are: - discoverability --- it seems pretty easy to arrange all elements in a hierarchy and make them accessible via clicking/revealing - no syntax errors --- if things fit together/connect, then it should be a syn…

But Hesse never actually describes the glass bead game. I thought that was the whole point of the book. He alludes to aspects of the alleged game, and let's the reader imagine perfection. Often similar elisions and allusions with the latest UI framework de jour.

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#53

Post by mdaniel »

benzguo wrote: post #9

Love unit, long time admirer. If you're into this, you might also be into Substrate - a non-visual but also graph-based programming model, for multi-step ML programs https://www.substrate.run/

https://guides.substrate.run/changelog#june-20-2024

> Added `If`

Uh, that's a pretty weird thing to add in a second release

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#54

Post by WillAdams »

mikhailfranco wrote: post #52
WillAdams wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use such tools when I can, and am fascinated with the concept, since it evokes Herman Hesse's _Glass Bead Game_ (from his novel _Magister Ludi) which was a book I remember fondly from my youth. Advantages are: - discoverability --- it seems pretty easy to arrange all elements in a hierarchy and make them accessible via clicking/revealing - no syntax errors --- if things fit together/connect, then it should be a syn…

But Hesse never actually describes the glass bead game. I thought that was the whole point of the book. He alludes to aspects of the alleged game, and let's the reader imagine perfection. Often similar elisions and allusions with the latest UI framework de jour.

Folks have been thinking (and dreaming) about it for a while now:

https://www.glass-bead.org/?lang=enview

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#55

Post by skybrian »

vidarh wrote: post #16
DrMiaow wrote: post #14

I 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…

There needs to be some way of sharing diagrams, but hopefully not as screenshots? Maybe more like a higher-level SVG, where there is text and you can look at it, but it’s not the preferred way of viewing it. It would need to be easy to embed these diagrams in other documents, which suggests a standard format and viewers readily available, for browsers and editors at least.

Support for embedding such things in another language (Like we do with SQL and regular expressions) would be important, too.

That might be a place to start. Can we replace regular expressions with a visual language? What would it take to have “railroad diagrams” widely available in at least one programming language and many editors?

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#56

Post by dmkolobov »

mdaniel wrote: post #53
benzguo wrote: post #9

Love unit, long time admirer. If you're into this, you might also be into Substrate - a non-visual but also graph-based programming model, for multi-step ML programs https://www.substrate.run/

https://guides.substrate.run/changelog#june-20-2024 > Added `If` Uh, that's a pretty weird thing to add in a second release

Is it? At work we added conditionals to our expression language some four or five years after the first version was released.

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#57

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

wangii wrote: post #26

The flow based visual programming has always being challenging field, and the problem remains: what are the values added comparing with the text based coding? I really want to love it, please give me a strong reason.

It's easier to parallelize a flow graph than a sequential series of instructions. (This is why visual flow programming caught on in embedded hardware and IoT.)

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#58

Post by dllthomas »

vidarh wrote: post #16
DrMiaow wrote: post #14

I 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…

I think diffs, snippets, and source control are crucial, but I think they only tie you to a textual representation if you are trying to use existing, text-oriented tools for them.

I grant that this makes the project significantly larger if you're going to remove that constraint.

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#59

Post by vidarh »

skybrian wrote: post #55
vidarh wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

There needs to be some way of sharing diagrams, but hopefully not as screenshots? Maybe more like a higher-level SVG, where there is text and you can look at it, but it’s not the preferred way of viewing it. It would need to be easy to embed these diagrams in other documents, which suggests a standard format and viewers readily available, for browsers and editors at least. Support for embedding such things in another…

The problem is now you're reinventing the entire software stack of everyone you ever need to communicate with about it.

Consider how hard it is to even get people to use additional symbols, like the APL's do...

Re: Unit is a general purpose visual programming system

#60

Post by worldsayshi »

vidarh wrote: post #29
worldsayshi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ProtoFlux is largely explained through tutorial videos I think. And I'm not saying that is superior. But I can imagine a lot of quality of life features around explaining it through voice that could be added to make it potentially superior or at least competitive. You could for example explain every node verbally and visually to an AI bot that can then explain it to the next person, or selectively retrieve parts of y…

Requiring me to watch videos to follow along is an absolute non-starter to me. It's way too slow. If it was just learning an environment maybe I could tolerate that, but the showstoppers is communicating about code for projects . An AI bot doesn't solve this - if you can't relay the information textually, there's no reason the AI bot will be able to.

Are you saying visual programming languages can only work if they can be explained with text?
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