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The Larch Environment

larchenvironment.com

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Re: The Larch Environment

#51

Post by lispm »

lkrubner wrote: post #42
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that exists, and it is not limited to Lisp, but it is a crazy horrible label to apply to specific people, especially when they produce something in a "worse (not everything we wanted) is better (but still better than what's out there)" fashion. We reach points where we realize our original vision isn't achievable or even desirable, and adapt it to fix those problems. That doesn't mean giving up or getting bo…

"The curse of Lisp" is a well known phrase that's been used in hundreds of essays: https://www.google.com/search?q=the+curse+of+lisp&oq=the+cur... There has been much debate about why Lisp has not taken over the world of computing. It was invented in 1958, it was taught in all the best schools, yet it has not gained mass traction. Paul Graham has touched on this issue in one of his essays: "So if Lisp makes you a bet…

> "The curse of Lisp" is a well known phrase that's been used in hundreds of essays:

If you actually look through the Google results, there are not that many 'essays' about that topic.

> There has been much debate about why Lisp has not taken over the world of computing. It was invented in 1958, it was taught in all the best schools, yet it has not gained mass traction.

This fate is shared by a lot of things.

The whole idea that Lisp needs or will get 'mass traction' is just complete bullshit. There is no reason for that expectation.

> Your statement "it is not limited to Lisp" is simply ignorant.

No, it isn't. The whole idea is just unscientific bullshit.

> There is something special about Lisp: no other language has received so much praise and so little use.

So, what. Lisp exists since 1958. During the last 50+ years people have written a lot about Lisp. That's it. There are now many times more articles published in the past year about Java and its ecosystem than over Lisp during its whole lifetime.

> Essays like the Bipolar Lisp Programmer are important contributions toward understanding what the problem is.

Tarver has very little idea what he is talking about. He lives in his own world. Everybody at an university has seen similar behavior in different contexts. But I would not call it 'bipolar', because this is just a bullshit label, failing to describe anything credible.

Lisp got used in a lot of innovative projects often in a R&D and University context. As a rapid prototyping tool, as a research vehicle, ... That their 'products' are not polished and tend to fail, is just normal. Innovation fails a lot. Also Lisp was often a prototyping tool. Prototypes tend to be reworked into products using a different technology. Just like somebody makes a prototype using a high-end CNC machine and later uses different production technologies for mass production. It also attracts people, who are innovative. It's just like startups, which fail a lot.

That's just it. Move on nothing to see.

Re: The Larch Environment

#52

Post by tizzdogg »

troymc wrote: post #31
d135_1r43 wrote: post #7

Visual programming is very established in contemporary music. Max/MSP and SuperCollider are state of the art, with dozens of papers written on it. I do not get why those languages are not used outside a very litte academic hipster music community.

It's not my area, but it's my understanding that the same is true in digital compositing, with software like NUKE and Adobe After Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_compositing

Likewise most 3d graphics software like Maya, Houdini, softimage ICE etc. These types of node-based interfaces tend to arise in applications which need high interactivity and have a fairly specific domain. They usually don't scale well to more general programming. For example, they are great for representing the flow of data through a network of functions but not so great at showing things like loops or recursion. That said, I do think graphics (and music) apps are at the forefront of "visual programming" but they are often not talked about in the context of programming language research. Language designers should be looking to them for inspiration.

Re: The Larch Environment

#53

Post by mtrimpe »

ibdknox wrote: post #22
mtrimpe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's meant to be. It has the infrastructure to be. It just doesn't have the documentation and ecosystem to show how.

My original goal wasn't ever to really create a visual programming environment, though the mismatch here might just be us using the term "visual" differently. We wanted to make something that allowed people to create whatever representation of their code/project/etc they want, but I didn't really expect that to ever turn into code generation via graphical media. Code Bubbles isn't visual programming as the term is ty…

True, I meant to refer to the visual 'augmented' programming as demonstrated in the Larch project. Not classical 'visual programming.'

Re: The Larch Environment

#54

Post by mtrimpe »

ibdknox wrote: post #25
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is unfair. From what I understand, Chris and company had ambitious goals for lighttable that were not achievable because of the Clojure programming model, so rather than give up, they are taking the next step that they see as necessary.

That's correct. There are so many things we'd love to do with LT, but the truth is (as Sean knows quite well) our current programming models simply don't support a lot of the experiences we should have. We started to hit roadblocks with our current paradigms and we happened to get lucky enough to stumble on some ideas that could move us forward. What we're working on now is the foundation necessary to do things we've…

Just to be clear... I know what you're building and totally rooting for you!

Just meant that the dream, or more precisely my dream, of LightTable is delayed/put aside by this new project.

The curse of Lisp, to me, is being pulled into ever deeper more beautiful solutions, which you're definitely flirting with, but it's also just an allegory so I really hope you pull it off!

Re: The Larch Environment

#55

Post by vegggdor »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #37
vegggdor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, do go on!

What else is there to say? Visual-enhanced programming environments are quite comment, to varying degrees of visualness. Heck, MS even once put out something called Visual C++ that was not very visual at all (beyond the IDE being a graphical application). The spectrum is so large, that it is not really useful as a label, you have to compare the programming experiences directly. As for visual languages, that is whole…

I was wondering about your comment on quartz composer, before I noticed that "cisual" is a typo ... I started out on Visual Basic, it certainly helped to lower the barrier to entry a little bit. In the end it was all source text, with helpful library component selection (the timer function had an image of a clock) and ui layout editing.

Re: The Larch Environment

#56

Post by vibrolax »

rm445 wrote: post #38
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #3

This is the 3rd or 4th time I've seen a proposal for visual programming environments (e.g. see http://cs.brown.edu/~spr/codebubbles/* , LightTable, this one, probably others) and I'm not sure why they don't take off. On the one hand, they seem incredibly useful and I really like Code Bubbles' approach to automatically pulling in relevant code ( http://cs.brown.edu/~spr/codebubbles/bubbles01.gif ). On the other hand,…

There are SOME successful visual programming environments, though not in the mainstream programs-for-PCs-and-servers arena. Firstly, simulation of dynamic systems in systems such as Simulink (Matlab) and Xcos. Secondly, PLCs are frequently programmed via ladder diagrams (though I'm not sure of what tools are used to translate between the ladder logic and the machine code). What these have in common is that there's a…

National Instruments' Labview environment also fits in this category. To me it feels like an analog of an electronic schematic diagram editor. I find that it turns into a visual mess as the system becomes complex. To counteract this, one has to spend a lot of time and effort revising the visual elements, and this is not time spent solving the problem better. Of course, many of us spend a lot of time revising our text-form code for clarity and ease of maintenance.

Re: The Larch Environment

#57

Post by blueprint »

mtrimpe wrote: post #54
ibdknox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. There are so many things we'd love to do with LT, but the truth is (as Sean knows quite well) our current programming models simply don't support a lot of the experiences we should have. We started to hit roadblocks with our current paradigms and we happened to get lucky enough to stumble on some ideas that could move us forward. What we're working on now is the foundation necessary to do things we've…

Just to be clear... I know what you're building and totally rooting for you! Just meant that the dream, or more precisely my dream, of LightTable is delayed/put aside by this new project. The curse of Lisp, to me, is being pulled into ever deeper more beautiful solutions, which you're definitely flirting with, but it's also just an allegory so I really hope you pull it off!

> I know what you're building and totally rooting for you!

Any hints? I'm extremely curious!

Re: The Larch Environment

#58

Post by seanmcdirmid »

lkrubner wrote: post #33
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #3

This is the 3rd or 4th time I've seen a proposal for visual programming environments (e.g. see http://cs.brown.edu/~spr/codebubbles/* , LightTable, this one, probably others) and I'm not sure why they don't take off. On the one hand, they seem incredibly useful and I really like Code Bubbles' approach to automatically pulling in relevant code ( http://cs.brown.edu/~spr/codebubbles/bubbles01.gif ). On the other hand,…

The one that really worked was HyperCard. Though it is now forgotten, it had a large following back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was also used to teach programming to children in some elite private schools (maybe it also made it into the public schools?). Danny Goodman wrote a book about it that some of us remember fondly; it was as good an introduction to basic programming as anything ever written. HyperCar…

HyperCard supported run forward but not back. It had no concept of time manipulation as shown in Bret victor's videos.

Re: The Larch Environment

#59

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mkremins wrote: post #46
arloft wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First reply, be gentle. I think the problem you're describing is one that results when an expert tries to teach / design something to beginners and they forget how to present the information in an approachable manner. Sure, with code it _seems_ like "duh of course you need to _know_ the libraries to use a visual editor!" but that goes against the basic concept of having a visual styled IDE. I'm a UX / visual design g…

This is spot on. In programming communities, design is frequently dismissed as an "implementation detail" or part of "making it look good" (i.e. marketing). This is a distinct and recurring cultural blind spot – more conceptually interesting programming tools than I can count have been torpedoed by a lack of attention to visual/UI/UX/HCI design. Design is absolutely critical when it comes to helping people understand…

You do know there is a whole field called programming language design right? Not everyone in the PL field is doing theory or chasing better performance, some of us actually focus on design (and I'm not the only one, and design has been studied and practiced since at least the 70s). Visual design is where we are especially weak, but we have our PX down (like UX, but User becomes Programmer).
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