4 ms·

I could see visual programming becoming less of a domain-specific rarity, if some really good VR goggles hit the market. 2D visual programming hasn't really gon

by drewm1980 11y ago

I could see visual programming becoming less of a domain-specific rarity, if some really good VR goggles hit the market. 2D visual programming hasn't really gone viral because complex graphs look like spaghetti when you project them down into a plane, but if they are floating in space I suspect that becomes less of a problem. Our brains evolved for taking in spatial information and manipulating 3D objects, after all. There are domains where visual programming is common (i.e. Control in Simulink, Data acquisition in Labview, pure data in audio), but they are domains where you don't really need to scale the complexity of the code, so the parts of the ecosystem that enable scalability (i.e. automatic and deterministic formatting of the visual representation of the code, version control) are underdeveloped.

VLM 11y ago
The future being unevenly distributed, you can program today in Minecraft yet its very unpopular. Or rephrased its very popular to look at what statistically almost no one produces. Also VLSI hand design is kinda like programming and is also not popular. There is a cognitive load issue where most people are not very good at 3d (source, the intro to drafting class I took). There is a self selection effect such that all the people "we" know are good at 3d games, but most people in general are extremely bad at 3d. Then again most people in the general public are also awful programmers or procedure designers in general. Most people are not draftsman or programmers, although this is a political opinion in direct opposition to the stated goals of the "everyone must code" movement. I'm old enough that I was around in the previous 3-d fad, the VRML era, and there were language tokenizers that could translate source code into very abstract 3d structures, although in practice it was completely useless. Looking with a liberal arts perspective, its like asking why sculpture never replaced literature, now with computers assistance. Could you look at Dyce's famous painting and have any idea it is King Lear unless someone told you ahead of time its Shakespeare's King Lear? A 3-d printed sculpture of Dyce's painting wouldn't be much of an improvement over looking at the original painting, well, it might look cool but it wouldn't help comprehension of the original theater play. Modern tools and energy sources mean marble sculpture is cheaper and more available to the masses than ever, yet despite the new easy tools there are more book authors than ever... I'll just admit defeat WRT some non-fictional topics. As a kickstarter or movement or experiment someone should make a "thingiverse for geometry" site. Nothing but endless 3-d printable models to use to physically demonstrate 2D and 3D geometry proofs. Can all of Euclid's proofs be 3-d printed it an educational format beyond the ridiculous (ridiculous being 3-d artificial clay tablets of a translation) In my infinite spare time, etc...
drawkbox 11y ago
Unreal 4 has Blueprints that you can almost do everything in or write custom additions/components to [1]. Personally I am not a huge fan of visual as it almost seems more complex sometimes seeing more than you need to at a time. I prefer C++ directly in the engine but for working with teams where others such as technical artists, game designers, artists etc need to modify it helps. It also helps document the architecture of something without having to dig in as much. They have a pretty good balance of direct code and/or visual blueprints in Unreal. The best part is you can always get to the metal with the code behind it, or you can choose to do either visual or direct code only, or both visual and direct code. I think visual programming that obscures the source or makes ugly source is not great. [1] https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/index.html https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/i...

VLM 11y ago

The future being unevenly distributed, you can program today in Minecraft yet its very unpopular. Or rephrased its very popular to look at what statistically almost no one produces. Also VLSI hand design is kinda like programming and is also not popular. There is a cognitive load issue where most people are not very good at 3d (source, the intro to drafting class I took). There is a self selection effect such that all the people "we" know are good at 3d games, but most people in general are extremely bad at 3d. Then again most people in the general public are also awful programmers or procedure designers in general. Most people are not draftsman or programmers, although this is a political opinion in direct opposition to the stated goals of the "everyone must code" movement. I'm old enough that I was around in the previous 3-d fad, the VRML era, and there were language tokenizers that could translate source code into very abstract 3d structures, although in practice it was completely useless. Looking with a liberal arts perspective, its like asking why sculpture never replaced literature, now with computers assistance. Could you look at Dyce's famous painting and have any idea it is King Lear unless someone told you ahead of time its Shakespeare's King Lear? A 3-d printed sculpture of Dyce's painting wouldn't be much of an improvement over looking at the original painting, well, it might look cool but it wouldn't help comprehension of the original theater play. Modern tools and energy sources mean marble sculpture is cheaper and more available to the masses than ever, yet despite the new easy tools there are more book authors than ever... I'll just admit defeat WRT some non-fictional topics. As a kickstarter or movement or experiment someone should make a "thingiverse for geometry" site. Nothing but endless 3-d printable models to use to physically demonstrate 2D and 3D geometry proofs. Can all of Euclid's proofs be 3-d printed it an educational format beyond the ridiculous (ridiculous being 3-d artificial clay tablets of a translation) In my infinite spare time, etc...

drawkbox 11y ago

Unreal 4 has Blueprints that you can almost do everything in or write custom additions/components to [1]. Personally I am not a huge fan of visual as it almost seems more complex sometimes seeing more than you need to at a time. I prefer C++ directly in the engine but for working with teams where others such as technical artists, game designers, artists etc need to modify it helps. It also helps document the architecture of something without having to dig in as much. They have a pretty good balance of direct code and/or visual blueprints in Unreal. The best part is you can always get to the metal with the code behind it, or you can choose to do either visual or direct code only, or both visual and direct code. I think visual programming that obscures the source or makes ugly source is not great. [1] https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/index.html https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/i...